The Stormy Petrel
by Menolly Mark
Summary: Holmes strikes up a poorly thought out aquaintance with Mycroft's fiancee, while trying to work Watson out of a deep depression. He is thus wrongly accused of both crimes of the flesh, and of the heart.Can be read with my TAotFH. INDEFINITE HIATUS
1. Chapter One: Love and Memories

**The Stormy Petrel**

by R. Porlock

**Author's Note: **

Several important things. For one, if you're going to read this story, you may want to briefly glance over **The Adventure of the Family Honor**, into which I wrote some of the characters who appear in this one, and which speaks at length of Mycroft Holmes' engagement to Miss Fairchild. If you don't want to read the other, you'll make do, but it couldn't hurt.

This story will very likely contain SLASH, or male/male relationships I am never sexually explicit in my writing, so you don't have to worry about that, but there will be hints, telling conversations, and physical affection of a romantic nature between two men, as well as significant innuendo of behind-the-scenes doings. If that's not your thing, do me a favor; don't read. Reviewing with nasty comments about homosexuality is really just not okay. Thank you!

The title of this story comes from the original Holmes tale, "The Naval Treaty," in which Sherlock Holmes says to Watson; "You are the stormy petrel of crime."

I would like to particularly thank **amalcolm1, **who told me I should post this, and who repeatedly points out the typos that escape me, and all of the other stupid little errors that I make. Read **amalcolm1**'s Holmes fics, especially "**A Scandal of No Importance**," which is, as Holmes says here, "capital, capital."

**Chapter One : Love and Memories**

My friend Sherlock Holmes once said to me, in the greatest earnest, that he believed I would be a much happier man, had he never sprung his eccentricities upon me. I told him at the time that what he said could not be farther from the truth, and I hope that the reader will believe me when I say it, even if Holmes himself could not.

In order to give some background to my denial of Holmes' self-deprication, I will have to start around the time that my companion had returned from beyond the Reichenbach falls. It was not long after the death of my beloved Mary, and we soon found ourselves, Sherlock Holmes and I, living together for the second time in his rooms at Baker Street, as if nothing had changed between us during the years of my marriage, and of his abscence from my life.

We took up a life which was much as it had been before, a life consisting of hunting down criminals, forestalling and preventing murders, and solving the most baffling of disappearances. It was comfortable and stimulating, and provided us with no end of entertainment and topics for conversation. As a pair of middle aged men, we felt that we were doing very well for ourselves, and were contented with our lot, or at least, we were as content as Holmes would ever allow himself to be for long.

It was around that time that Mycroft Holmes, the brother of Sherlock, became engaged to a Miss Anne Fairchild, and she lived very near him at Pall Mall. We saw very little of the lethargic genius after that, and Holmes spent some days in gloomy disappintment at the loss of the only man he knew who could challenge his own mental faculties. As I had few close companions of my own, and Holmes himself had none, we were left to a solitary and secluded, personal life, in which we had each other and our own thoughts for company. I felt then that I should begin again to write down the accounts of our adventures, and this particular account is of a kind that perhaps Sherlock Holmes himself will never be permitted to read. I am not sure if I could bear his expression upon reading my memories of all that followed Mycroft's engagement. There are some things, perhaps, that are better left unsaid., and yet I feel as though if I were to keep it all bottled up in my soul, it would ultimately destroy me from inside. And so, against perhaps the better judgment of both my friend and I, you are to be privileged to this singular narrative.

Our tale begins at the same place in which very many of my adventures begin; with the arrival of a visitor whom I had not heard from in some time. Mrs. Cecil Forrester had been a friend of my wife's long ago, and the two of them had resided together in the time of "The Sign of the Four," before Mary and I were married. It was to my great surprise, then, that she arrived on my doorstep at Baker Street, on a Monday morning. Her arms were filled with a bundle of papers, which were all tied together with a long red ribbon.

"Good morning, Doctor Watson," She said, sounding as if she felt somewhat unsure and awkward about seeing me after so long a time. I had not seen her since only two days after my wife's death, and we' had not corresponded, as if she found any exchange with me too painful to continue. "I trust that you're well," she continued, glancing around the room at the new furnishings that we had been forced to purchase when a fire had destroyed most of our abode only weeks before.

"Very well, thank you," I returned, trying to keep myself from eyeing her packet of papers with the curiosity that was flaring up within me. "And yourself?"

Apparently feeling that the formalities were finished, Mrs. Forrester did not respond to my question, but instead laid her bundle down on the breakfast table, next to the eggs that my friend and I had not yet started on. "I don't mean to intrude upon your time, or that of Mr. Sherlock Holmes," she started quietly, "but I wanted to bring you something."

"Indeed?" I asked, gesturing at the papers. "Something you found at home, perhaps?"

Mrs. Forrester nodded. "They're some letters," she said, "of Miss Morestan's; well, Mrs. Watson's, now. Some letters, anyway, that I found when I was cleaning up the downstairs rooms. I was not quite sure what to do with them, but I felt that to throw them away would be a crime, and so I brought them over in hopes that you might want to see them."

My heart sank as I looked down at my wife's correspondence, and a pang went through me when I recognized that they were in fact tied together by the hair ribbon that she had been so distraught about losing when she had left Mrs. Forrester's company. "Thank you," I said, around my thoughts. "It was very thoughtful of you to bring them over."

We sat for several minutes making forced and friendly conversation, until Mrs. Forrester felt that she had done her work, and that it was time for her to leave. I saw her out, and watched her walking down the street in front of us, my mind preoccupied even as I waved my goodbyes with the letters that lay upon the table.

I tried as hard as I could to keep myself from rifling through my wife's remembrances for a long time. I paced the table, I interested myself in some correspondence of my own, I thought of taking a walk in the direction that I usually went when Sherlock Holmes needed to be alone. The clock seemed to have stopped still on the wall, as if it was watching me, and waiting for my resolution to fail.

Of course, fail it did. After numerous valiant attempts to ignore my desires, I finally did seat myself at the side table, and, carefully, with my hand only saved from trembling by my doctor's training, I untied the red ribbon around the parcel of letters. On a whim, I tied the ribbon around my own wrist for safe keeping, and unrolled the first of the letters,

The handwriting was unmistakably my late wife's, just as Mrs. Forrester had promised. There was a certain fantastical curl to her Ls and Ts which implied her extremely delicate, feminine hand, and yet a firmness in the way that she pressed her pen to the paper which bespoke her strong character. Holmes himself had remarked on this long ago, when I had first begun to receive her correspondence, and I noticed it now almost without any effort.

There is really no need for me to recount to you what was in the first letter. I shall suffice it to say that it was a letter addressed to myself, in the days just before our marriage, when our hearts had been so intertwined that we did not have to see each other to know what it was that the other was thinking. She spoke to me of her eagerness for our reunion at long last, and of her desires for me to meet her maiden aunt, who would apparently be coming for a visit in several days, and of all sorts of other small matters which are important perhaps only to myself.

And yet, at the close of the letter, which she signed with an extremely sensitive "Yours always, Mary," I found that there was water in my admittedly time-hardened eyes.

It was of course, at that inopportune moment that Sherlock Holmes chose to descend from his bedroom to join for me a much delayed breakfast.

He did not immediately look up at me as he came in, but began to speak to me without meeting my gaze. "Ah, Watson, an early riser this morning, I see. Thank you for waiting on me for breakfast. I could hear that we had visitors this morning, anyone of particular note?"

He turned to face me, and I saw a slight surprise take hold of him. I had forgotten the tears in my eyes, and, shamefaced, turned from him to dash them away upon my sleeve, wondering how I would cover for my obviously unmanliness. Holmes chose to say nothing, but there was a softness in his expression and gestures which told me that he had taken careful note of my condition, and was in the process of deciding how to combat it.

"Yes, Indeed," I started, gruffly as I could. "But the woman has gone now. I assume she had important business of her own to do in in town this morning."

"Not a client," Holmes said, and it was a statement, not a question. I glanced down at the ribbon on my wrist, and grimaced inwardly at the precautions I had not taken against Holmes deductive ways.

"Not a client," I agreed, and lapsed into silence for some time. Holmes endured the silence with no change in his manner, and helped himself to some eggs off my plate, when it appeared that I had no taste for them myself.

We were comfortably silent at the table for most of the meal, and Holmes kept his eyes off of me, occupying himself entirely with his own breakfast. His curiosity, and something else, a more pressing and permeating emotion seemed to roll off of him as if it were a physical, almost tangible object, and yet he remained respectfully immersed in himself until I chose to speak up.

"I should like," I said, "to go to the club today, I think."

"Very good," agreed Holmes with a nod. "It has been some time since you've been to the club, I was beginning to be concerned that you'd lost interest entirely in leaving our humble abode."

"I should like to have a walk and a few quiet moments to myself," I said. "If you are not too offended by the desire for some solitude."

"Capital, capital," said my companion, almost absently. "I shall take advantage of my own solitary day to immerse myself in some of those occupations which you find so loud and unneccessarily messy."

And so it was that after breakfast, I took leave of Sherlock Holmes, and 221B Baker Street, and set off down the street towards my club, walking slowly, having no great desire either to linger, or to reach my destination in any particular haste. When I reached it, I read through some papers, and to my chagrin, and I'm sure to that of Sherlock Holmes as well, the country was startling quiet for a Monday morning. I found it odd that, being a devoted and upright citizen as I considered myself, I should be dismayed to find no murders, thefts, or acts of mysterious violence in the periodicals. Holmes' influence, it seemed, had so far overtaken me that I could not separate myself from the life of daring that I had adopted.

Finding, therefore, nothing to sufficiently distract myself, it was only a matter of a few hours before I wandered home again. As I started up the street towards the steps to my own building, I saw, to my surprise, the dark-haired, slight figure of Miss Anne Fairchild, Mycroft Holmes' fiancée, walking away from the door. She smiled at me when she saw me, and inclined her head slightly in polite recognition, before heading off in the direction of her own home. I thought that she was a little more hurried that I had expected, and put it down to an eagerness to to return to Mycroft's side. The incident only caused me more morose thoughts of how Mary had once run to me in much the same way, and all of the good that had been done me by my stay at the club was erased in that moment. With a resigned and frustrated sigh, I entered the house.

Sherlock Holmes was just ascending the stairs when I entered. I stopped him with a greeting, and he turned on his heel and smiled at me, starting back down towards him, clad in his dressing gown, as if he had spent the day just as alone as he had wished.

"No clients, then," I asked, and he shook his head. "I saw," I ventured, "Miss Fairchild coming away from our door as I was approaching. Nothing the matter, I should hope, with her and your brother?"

"Nothing the matter at all," my friend assured him, seating himself in his armchair, and holding out a cigar for me from his jeweled cigar case. "She only wanted to ask me a few particulars about a present she is planning for Mycroft. I told her that, as Mycroft was not really a man to be well known by anyone, her guess was as good as mine on the subject, and so she will really have to fend for herself. I have never been a man for lavish presents."

I shifted in my chair, and waved a hand to decline the cigar, which Holmes put back into the case before lighting his own. He puffed on it thoughtfully for a moment, and then turned his inquisitive eyes back to me. "And how," he asked, "did you spend your quiet day? At the club as you projected to?"

"I did," I said. "It was most refreshing."

"Quite, I'm sure," replied my friend, with a more piercing gaze than he had fixed on me all day. "I can see the signs of the release of tension in your face," he continued, with a wealth of gentle sarcasm. "You look absolutely healed and healthy."

I chose to ignore the doubting remarks, and turned instead, to some bread and cheese which Holmes had left out for me on the table, presumably after his own dinner. "I should like," he said, after a moment of watching me devouring the remains of his meal, "to go to Mycroft's tomorrow, if you wouldn't mind another day of your own time. He has asked me if I'd come to hear some little problem of his, and I should be loathe to turn anything down which provides as interesting a possibility as the case of Miss Fairchild's honor did previously."

"Even better," I said, rising from my seat, "I'll come with you."

Holmes looked skeptical for a moment, and my heart sank. Lately he had seemed to have no desire to invite me on any of his quests, and though I thought that it had been simply a case of his being at odds with my sentiments about his brother's marriage, now he had, for the second time, seemed to me as if he wanted me to take no part in a case.

Apparently seeing my downcast face, Holmes gave me a light clap on the shoulder, and smiled. "Surely," he said, "I would be honored as always to have you along, although I fear the incident may provide little for your personal interests."

I could tell that he was protecting my pride, since his two statements had been so very at odds. How could something that he thought would give him ample amusement be disinteresting to me? It was obvious that he would rather I did not accompany him. "We'll, see," I said, suddenly feeling very weary. "And now, if you don't mind, Holmes, I think I'll go on up to bed. I'm not feeling myself today, perhaps I've caught a bit of a cold after all."

I tramped up the stairs, and flopped into my bed fully clothed. It was a very short time before I fell asleep, with the image of Mary's ribbon playing at the corners of my subconscious mind. Even as I drifted off, I could hear Holmes steadily pacing, as he stalked back and forth in front of the fire.


	2. Chapter Two: The Violin Music

**Author's Note:**

Thanks particularly to **Mysterylover17**, and to **amalcolm1** for pointing out my blind spots.

I have every desire to fix the errors and typos that you've been recommending, and I think that I have gotten most of the plot problems of my previous story already. My computer went up in smoke, however, and I'm going to have to wait to edit the little things like commas and typos until I'm on a machine that can connect to my large-screen monitor. Bear with me, I will take all of your suggestions to heart as soon as I can. ;)

**Chapter Two: The Violin Music**

I slept soundly for some hours, until I was awakened by the sound of music coming from downstairs. It was not unusual for this to occur, and in fact most of the time recently I had been able to sleep soundly through all of Holmes' improvisational spells with his violin. This time, however, I found myself surprisingly intrigued by the drifting melody, which, unlike most of my friend's late-night attempts, was somber, mournful, and deeply moving. I found that even as I lay restlessly in my bed, the sound of the violin meshed so well with my own thoughts, which I was able to comfortably introspect with the violin as my background.

After several moments of this, I got up, and padded as quietly downstairs as I could, so as not to disturb the musician.

He was lying across the arms of his favorite chair, the one piece of furniture which he had insisted on keeping, even after the terrible fire which destroyed everything else in our sitting room.

I stopped on the bottom of the stairs, and waited. Holmes did not look up, and, to my deepest concern, I found that echoed on his face was an almost exact copy of the very turmoil and emotion which I myself felt, and had felt ever since the arrival of Mary's letters. His features were drawn tightly down, and his lips were a single taught thin line. His eyes were open and bright, and yet they swam with a sort of unspoken resignation that seemed to speak of a great conflict underneath. It was easy to see why the music was so appealing to me, as it was an almost perfect copy of the innermost thoughts of my heart. It occurred to me that perhaps this was normal of two men who had lived so long and so intimately in each other's company.

"Ah, my dear Watson," said my friend, without looking up, so that I could only assume that he had known for some time that I was present. "I am sorry to see that I've woken you after all."

"Not at all," I insisted, with a shake of my head, crossing to take the chair opposite to his own. "I was lying awake when I heard your stylings, and I thought I'd come down to keep you company."

"Very kind of you," nodded Holmes. "I think that I have perhaps composed something that might be even to your liking this time. I am rather proud of it, although it is contrary to my usual more triumphant pieces."

"I am very much impressed by it myself," I agreed. "I have spoken before of my feelings about your musical talents."

"Very kind," murmured Holmes again, and then he carefully laid the violin against the foot of the chair, straightening up to meet my eyes.

Even in half-sleeping musical reverie, Sherlock Holmes was a striking man. He was partially folded into his armchair, perched quietly between the arms, gazing at me out of his large, inquisitively dancing eyes, long fingers resting lightly on his lap. There was a lingering sense that he was in the midst of a fantastical introspection of his own, which had crept out of his brilliant mind in the form of the tunes of his instrument, and I was a privileged man, I thought, to have witnessed any of it.

He had erased all traces of the sadness which I had thought that I had observed upon his features, almost to the point of making me think that I had imagined it. And yet, I knew that I had not been so sleepily delirious as to make up such a thing, something I had almost never seen on my friend's face before. It was something other than the disappointment of a failed case, or the disgruntled lethargy that came from more than a single hour of boredom. Instead, it seemed to be an almost hopeless longing, a loss dealt with in silence.

"Perhaps you'd smoke a pipe with me," Holmes said after a moment. "My fingers grow tired of the strings, and I think that both of us are too much awake now to return to bed."

I did not refuse, and we sat there, the two of us, in the middle of the night, with the only lights in the room being those of the occasionally struck match. It was not long before I noticed that Holmes had fallen asleep in the chair which he was occupying, the haze of tobacco smoke drifting around him. It was not unusual, and I let him lie there, conscious of the genuine peace of the moment. Then I tiptoed upstairs to bed, and got myself an hour or so of sleep before morning.

Sherlock Holmes was up early the next morning, despite his late night musical endeavors. He dressed hurriedly, and wolfed d own a peremptory breakfast, before looking pointedly at me, as I was still in my dressing gown, with drowsy eyes.

"Well," he said, raising an eyebrow. "You're not coming?"

"Oh," I said, startled, shaking the sleep off of me as best I could, "I thought you'd be going alone. I'll just go up and get dressed, then."

"Hurry up," admonished Holmes, as I disappeared upstairs. "We're going to be late as it is."

My friend rushed me along all the way to Pall Mall, so eager was he to get to the scene of his summons. He seemed rather flushed, and I thought that it was a mixture of his being excited over a case which he had sensed was imminent, and of his musical exertions of the previous night. As we approached the house, Holmes apparently noticed the disreputable state he was in after so much exhaustion, and began to pull at his clothes, attempting to straighten creases that I myself could not see.

It was most unlike my companion to be overly concerned with his appearance, and I began to suspect that this errand we were on was of more import than I had previously thought. Perhaps Mycroft and Miss Fairchild were to introduce us to one of the numerous more illustrious men whom Holmes occasionally came in contact with in his duties as a consulting detective. Mycroft Holmes had a way of knowing the most unexpected people, so that it would not be at all strange for Holmes to wish to look his best under such circumstances. Suddenly, I was conscious of my own appearance, and hoped that our late-not vigil would not cause us to look the worse for wear.

"Ah, Sherlock, and the good Doctor Watson," Mycroft boomed out, as we stood upon his front steps. "Just ten minutes late, just ten minutes. I was beginning to wonder if you were to come."

"Five minutes," Sherlock assured him with a smile. "your appointment, I beleive, was for ten o'clock, and it is five past ten now."

"Five minutes," agreed Mycroft, with a wave of dismissal. "Five minutes, then. And perhaps you'd like to come in off the step and take more comfortable seats while I recount to you my troubles, or would you prefer that we do it right here in the cold?"

We arranged ourselves comfortably in his sitting room, and Mycroft himself occupied the sofa on which I had spent a week or so previously after having received some rather worrisome injuries during the Baker Street fire. Holmes made himself perfectly at home, and I felt that he seemed even more at home here than he did in our own familiar rooms, almost as if he rose to the presence of his intellectual equal. I found myself wishing that I could claim to be endowed with such powers, and realized for the first time in my acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes that I was in no way suited to be his intimate companion. The thought was a black one, and I missed, in my revelation, the first words of Mycroft's dilemma.

"You see," he was saying, with a bit of an abashed smile, "the problem may seem an extremely commonplace one to such as yourself, but for me it is quite a troubling matter. I purchased a diamond bracelet, some time ago, of excellent craftsmanship, from a friend of mine who knows the right people. It was to be a wedding present for my Anne, although I had hoped to be able to conceal it form her, as it was to be a surprise until the time of our marriage. It was of course," and now he gave a heavy, almost theatrical sigh, which shook his great bulk and the sofa below it, "it was of course discovered before I had intended it to be. Anne found out in one of the drawers of of my cabinets, when she claims she was looking for a letter than she had begun while here in my sitting room, although if you ask me, I think that the shrewd girl knew that I was hiding something, and couldn't bear to let it go without taking a peek." He smiled, and Sherlock Holmes rolled his eyes for my benefit. "Of course, she shrieked with delight, and brought it to my attention, and I was forced to make up some story about how it was a present for some friend of the family that I'm sure I've never had. It was most awkard, Sherlock, I believe you'd have enjoyed the scene."

"Well," he continued, "you can imagine my suspicions, then, when yesterday morning I awoke to discover that the bracelet had vanished from the drawer. I assumed that Anne had taken it off somewhere to play with it or try it on, since I suppose my story abou the family friend was hardly convincing. When I confronted her about it, however, as gently as I could, she flew into a rage, and admonished me for ever accusing her of having done such a thing. It was with some difficulty, then, that I got a straight answer out of her as to whether or not she had taken it, but she holds to this moment that she never touched the bracelet beyond when I saw her myself, and I am inclined to believe her, as one hardly steals one's own wedding present."

"Quite true. And so you think therefore that someone made their way into your drawers and took away the bracelet? And you have no idea who that might be?" My friend asked.

"No, no idea."

"Perhaps while you were out at the club, or out on a morning walk?"

"I really couldn't say."

"Was anything broken into, or in disarray yesterday morning, whne you found the bracelet missing?"

Mycroft thought about this, and let his eyes rove around his sitting room, scanning each piece of furniture quickly before turning back to his brother. "No," he said, "nothing was touched but the bracelet. And before you ask, no, there were no traces, nor prints, no cigar or tobacco ash, nothing that would arouse your particular suspicions, and it is because of that lack of trace that I am so very puzzled. It is not so uncommon a thing for jewelry left in an unlocked place to be stolen, and perhaps it was foolish of me, but I haven't the foggiest idea who might have taken it. You know well that I never take any visitors, other than Miss Fairchild and yourselves. "

"You did not, then, misplace it?" Holmes asked, with a wry smile. "There's no need for you to be ashamed of having done so, although Watson might choose to go off on one of his tirades about the virtues of tidy living."

Mycroft shook his head, and folded his arms in his lap with a slightly offended air. We took that to mean that he had not misplaced it, and Sherlock Holmes turned to me with a shrug and a smile. "I suppose we shall have to make a sweep of the house ourselves, Watson, if you wouldn't mind assisting me. It should be more to your liking, as Mycroft's recent engagement seems to have done good things for his living arrangements and habits." Indeed, the room was much cleaner and more inviting now that Miss Fairchild had taken her feminine hand to it.

Holmes stood, and I was about to follow suit when a cheerful female voice came in from the doorway which he had left open behind us.

"You're quite right, Mr. Holmes. It was a pigsty before I got here, and probably will become so again once we have gotten used to married life, and my word no longer holds any sway with my dear Mycroft."

Miss Fairchild smiled at us as she entered the room, and stood by Mycroft's sofa, leaning one elbow on the arm.

Mycroft Holmes laughed good naturedly, and smiled up into Miss Fairchild's face with an expression of such genuine contentment that I think both Holmes and I were somewhat taken aback. Used as we were now to the idea of his engagement, it was something else to see the emotion flow between the two of them in front of our eyes.

Holmes himself was looking very keenly at Miss Fairchild, I thought, with a slight frown, not of displeasure, but of concentration I saw, or at least, I thought I saw that twinge of longing for just one tiny moment, before he composed his features perfectly into a state of amused skepticism.

I stared at my friend in shock for a moment, my lips parted stupidly and my eyes wide in the face of this display of emotion. "Come, Watson," he said, "let us make our rounds of the room, and then we can head home for lunch, unless Mycroft and Miss Fairchild would be so good as to retain us for their own meal."

We got up and started around the room, examining into corners, checking under carpets, and treading carefully around any patches of dust that might contain footprints. We were forced to admit, after a very short period of time, that no one at all had been in the room, other than Mycroft himself, and a pair of smaller, lightly marked feet, which could only have been Miss Fairchild's. There was, however, quite obviously nothing else of any note in the room, and this was quite unusual. There was always something, in our previous cases, which left some sort of trace, but even the magnificent Sherlock Holmes admitted with an eager thrill that he could find nothing. It did not so much bother him that he had been usuccessful as it stimulated him that he was faced with a challenge.

"Excellent, Watson," he said with a rueful grin. "We've completely lost the trail of our jewel thief."

As for myself, I found it impossible to tear my mind from the image of my friend's eyes as they had rested on Miss Fairchild only moments before. The jewel thief and his completely miraculous escape could not have interested me less for the world.


	3. Chapter Three: The Importance of Truth

**Author's Note: **Having some serious issues with the document manager. Punctuation and formatting might be off. Bear with me, I'll fix it soon as I can. Is anyone else having trouble?

Chapter Three: The Importance of the Truth

For the rest of the day, no matter what I attempted to engage myeslf in, I was a distracted and useless man. Mary's letters provided nothing but nostalgia, and all my friend chose to do all day was to sit in his chair, smoking his pipe and murmuring to himeslf about the disappearance of the jewel thief, just loud enough so that I could hear snatches of his inner monologue. I, who had nothing to offer to such but awe and admiration, sat by myself, seperated as far as I could from him by the table and the sofa, pretending to read a book. After a while, Holmes gave up his speculation, and turned to his chemical researches, leaving me free to watch him as he meddled with the different multicolored chemical substances that were the sole partners of his leisure time.

Despite my best and most valiant efforts, there were only two thoughts that continually occupied my mind. One was that of Mary's soft expression as she wrote me the love letters of our younger days, and the other was of Holmes' own expression as he watched Miss Fairchild's loving dotage on his brother Mycroft.

To those who said that Holmes was not capable of human affection, I had always insisted that they did not know him. Perhaps I didn't know him well enough myself to make any claim to the contrary, perhaps no one could know a man who was so deeply immersed in his own thoughts most of the time. But what I had seen in him was the potential, the potential to be as gentle and surprisingly sensitive a man as anyone could imagine. To think that it was only in these last two days that I had managed to catch a glimpse of the fulfillment of that potential.

After all of my devoted observances of my companion's methods and of his madness, he doted suddenly on the idea of a dark-haired girl with sharp, suspicious eyes, a girl whom he could never have even entertained the notion of having for his own. And yet it was she that evoked that passionate loneliness in his eyes that I had been so loathe to see, and for what reason? I supposed that it was expected for me to attempt to protect Sherlock Holmes from the very heartsickness that envelopped me every time I cast a glance at my dear wife's correspondance. In fact, the feelings of loss that I had for Mary, and the feelings of concern and consternation for Sherlock Holmes seemed to take the shape together of one large knot in my chest, which became so entangled that I could not seperate my thoughts of Mary from my worries for my friend.

It was understandable, therefore, that I found myself at a loss, staring off into space while Holmes mixed his test tubes across the room.

"It's a pretty little trouble that Mycroft's in," Holmes was saying as he poured the result of his mixture into a beaker. "There is nothing he can say against the lady, and yet I would not be too very surprised if she'd misplaced it herself, after taking it out to have a look. I should hardly think that she has stolen it intentionally, that would be pure foolishness on her part, and yet I think that this may be a much simpler situation than we've been making it out to be." He gave his beaker a pleased look, and, holding it up to the light, nodded to himself, and then turned around. "Watson? Watson, for god's sake, man, look alive."

I met his gaze with a raised eyebrow. "Do you want to believe, then, that she had no malicious intent when she took the bracelet?"

"Well, it seems perfectly ridiculous to think that she would take her own wedding gift from the home of her fiance, don't you think?" Holmes paused, and then the import of my words seemed to catch up with him. He gave me a puzzled, expectant look. "Do I want to believe? We don't believe what we want to believe. I've said to you a hundred times that what is important is the truth."

I grunted noncomitally, and Holmes went into the other room to wash his hands of the stuff he'd been working with. When he returned, there was a curious smile on his face, and he looked at me for a long moment before shaking his head, and seating himself back in his armchair.

"Watson," he said reflectively, "I think it might be time for two middle aged, bored gentlemen to take a change of scenery for the sake of our health and happiness."

This was something new. It had always been I who had recommended such changes of pace, since my friend had never seemed to take any interest in anything outside of his sphere of crime and counter crime. I surveyed him with pursed lips, starting to worry that perhaps this drastic change of heart that I had noticed in him lately was more illness than emotional outburst.

He read the doubt on my features, and laughed. "I'm not ill," he said. "If either of us is ill, it's yourself, my dear doctor. You look peaky and pale, and I should not be surprised if it had something to do with the way we've been stagnating in London lately. No," he shook his head with another of his little smiles, "No, I couldn't feel better myeslf."

I busied myself with rearranging a few books that had been left out on the table, and said nothing.

That evening, it occured to me that I would do much better to make myself useful, rather than to lie around like a lump and to squander my time bemoaning my own situation. After much consideration, I realized that the most help that I could be to my friend would be to walk over to Mycroft Holmes' residence, and to take a look around by myself, not being expected by Mycroft or his young lady. After all, I felt at this point that Sherlock Holmes was rather too biased to correctly deal with the case, and pleased myeslf with the thought that I could be of great use.

With all of this in mind, I set out without warning for Pall Mall, leaving Sherlock Holmes rummaging around in a trunk in his bedroom. I heard a thunk from upstairs as I left the house, and presumed that what I heard was the sound of his pulling over his old metal trunk to pack away some of the mess that I had so complained about earlier.

I was used to hurrying around after dark, since more than many times I had spent long evenings with Holmes chasing after one man or another in darkness. It was not difficult, therefore, for me to make my way to Pall Mall in a short period of time. It was still ten o'clock when I reached Mycroft's residence, and I felt slightly guilty about calling so late. Still, I decided, he would never resent me for visiting on Holmes' behalf, and he should never expect that I was there for any other reason. It was an absolutely fool-proof alibi, and the knowledge that I had the ability to make secret trips of my own comforted me.

I rang the bell, and straightened up importantly as Mycroft Holmes came to the door. " Excuse me," I began, "but I thought that I should take another look over your rooms, for the sake of making completely sure that there was nothing of note."

Mycroft gave me an extremely strange look, a mixture of surprise and of some sort of gentle trepidation. "Oh, really," he said, with a hesitant smile and a little cough. "Well, I suppose that if that is what Sherlock would prefer, I had best grant you some freedom in the rooms immediately. I hardly think it will be of any use, however, Miss Fairchild and I have been tramping around all over the place and acting as if nothing had happened. I'm afraid we haven't preserved any clues that you may find of interest."

"I'm only going to take a look for safety's sake," I insisted, and, sliding past him, I began to circle the room much in the same way that I had seen my friend do only that morning. Mycroft watched me as I went with a frown, and made a little noise of consternation before drifting off into his upstairs rooms.

As I should have expected, and much to my chagrin, there was nothing to be seen of any criminal or clue. I had so hoped to find something to contribute to Sherlock Holmes' case, that my heart sank entirely when I realized that I had been foolish to think I could surpass his skills of observation. I had been quite convinced that this trip to Pall Mall would be my salvation, but it seemed as if I was as lost in my occupation as ever, and there was nothing for it.

"Thank you," I called upstairs to Mycroft's bedroom, attempting to sound dignified and resolute. "I think I've seen enough here, and I assume that we will call on you very soon to revisit the case." There was no response from upstairs, and I assumed that he would be glad if I ended my intrusion, so I slipped out the door without waiting for him to come down and bid me goodbye.

It was then that I heard, to my surprise, the voice of Sherlock Holmes coming from around the corner of the house, by the window. I waited for a moment, and then heard, in response, a woman's voice, high pitched and whispering. Knowing as I did how rude it was to continue listening, I could not help myeslf, and I peered around towards the sound, to see my friend standing at Mycroft's washroom window, with the tiny, sharp face of Miss Fairchild framed inside. There was a smile playing on the corners of Holmes' lips, a sort of mischevious merriment that was usually the result of a successfully solved mystery, and Miss Fairchild had a smile of her own in her eyes. As I watched, he reached forward, and took her hand in one of his in a gesture of thanks and warmth.

My stomach dropped, and suddenly I felt as if I might faint. In desperate earnest to prevent this from happening, I stumbled backwards, and kicked a rock as I attempted to get my bearings. I heard no sound, but Holmes' head snapped around, and I saw that he noticed my presence. His eyes widened in complete astonishment, and he opened his mouth to say something, but I, unable to trust myself, bowed my head in a curt nod of greeting, and then started for home.

I thought I could hear his footsteps following me for a time, but as I did not turn around, I could never be sure that it was he who was following me, and not simply a bystander taking the same road. After a while, the steps ceased, and I entered our rooms in Baker Street alone.

I would like to say that because of all of my analytical training from Sherlock Holmes, I found time in those moments to reflect carefully, and to draw my own conclusions about my friend's presence at Mycroft's home. I would like to be able to tell the reader that I was very logical and detailed about my observations, and that I found myself drawing to a reasonable interpretation of events. There are a lot of things that I would like to say. All that I can say, however, is that had more comfort in Mary's letters that night than I had expected to have at any point, and I found myself, for the first and last time in my life, eyeing the cocaine bottle on the desk.

It was very late in the evening when Sherlock Holmes crept upstairs to my room. He was already in his dressing gown, and he had his pipe between his fingers, as if he had been downstairs in the sitting room for some time after he returned. I did not acknowledge him at once, as it was late, and I was unsure of what to say, my mind was so crossed with confusion.

He walked around from one side of my bed to the other, in one of those pacing, anxious gestures that I knew so well as the prelude to some great revelation. I was almost afraid, therefore, that he was going to tell me the truth, all at once, something that I did not believe I was prepared for.

"Watson," he said in a whisper. "You're awake."

There was no deceiving Sherlock Holmes. I sat up on my elbow, and nodded blearily.

Holmes knelt down beside me, resting his arms beneath his chin on top of my rumpled covers. "Did you find anything at Mycroft's, then?"

"Nothing," I said. "Nothing of any importance."

'No, I though tyou wouldn't." It was a pointed remark, that had something of a plea in it, as if my companion was suggesting to me that I should not say that I had seen anything at all. I was offended, and closed my eyes, turning my face back into my pillow in protest. "You were right," I agreed, and then tried to seem as dormant as I could, hoping that he would go away and amuse himself as he chose for the rest of the evening.

Holmes stood up as if to go, but looked at me for a long time before he left. He had a queer frown on his face, and his fingers drummed nervously against his leg as he watched me where I slept. Just as I was about to speak up in my annoyance, he spoke up, a little bit louder than he had previously. "Watson?"

"What is it?"

"It's nothing. I won't keep you up any longer."

Then he padded away, and I heard the door to his own bedroom close, although I could hear him continue to pace around his own bed until I drifted off to sleep.


	4. Chapter Four: An Elaborate Game

**Author's Note**: AHHH DEATH TO THE DOCUMENT MANAGER. That is all.

Actually, that isn't all. I was thinking it would be fun to do a little Sherlock Holmes fanfiction challenge. Just a thought, but might be something to do. All the slash I've seen here is Holmes/Watson, which, granted, I love mor e than is healthy, but I thought it'd be fun to see if we could try some other slash pairing, like Holmes/Lestrade, Watson/Mycroft, Lestrade/Gregson, Holmes/Henry Baskerville, I don't know, what you will. A little experiment. I'll do it if you will.

Okay, done with my shpiel,

**Chapter Four: An Elaborate Game**

Breakfast the next day was spent in uncomfortable silence. I was scarcely hungry, and Holmes seemed loathe to tear his eyes off of his own meal to meet mine. There was nothing abashd or worried in his manner, but only diffident and detached, as if he was pointedly avoiding any reference or gesture that might turn my attention to the subject of his outing the previous night.

"We shall have to make some inquiries today, Watson," he began conversationally after a moment. "As to the matter of Mycroft's bracelet. It is a pretty little puzzle."

"I suppose we should go to Pall Mall again." I kept my eyes cast down at the table.

"Not at all," said Sherlock Holmes in surprise. "No, we are to meet with Inspector Lestrade in several hours for lunch in the comfort of our own home. I believe that refusing the assistance of the official police simply for the sake of making it a...well, a family affair would be quite callous and selfish. No matter how often you accuse me of the same, I like to surprise you when I can."

This was a pleasant surprise, and I gave my friend a short smile. He perked up at my positive reaction, and, busying himself with the remainder of his food, he encouraged me with a flick of his fingers to attack my own.

As Holmes had declared, Lestrade rang the bell only two hours later, and shuffling in with a gruff greeting when I opened the door. He looked out of sorts, and I took it that as usual, he was at a loss for leads, and perhaps had even more to offer my friend than the mystery of the diamond bracelet.

"Mr. Holmes," grunted Lestrade, with a curt inclination of his head. "As you requested, and always a pleasure to be of service to a friend."

"My dear Inspector Lestrade." My friend whisked forward from the table, brushing his breakfast to the edge of it as if making a uselss effort to improve the appearance of the room. "How good of you to come. I assume you've spoken to my brother Mycroft on the subject already."

"I spoke to the lady," Lestrade nodded. "Our old friend Miss Anne Fairchild, missing a present that she has yet to receive." His raised eyebrows gave me the distinct impression that he was not impressed by our young lady's story.

I expected Sherlock Holmes to take offense to this intimation of her guilt, but, with a quiet shrug, he cast a rueful glance at the breakfast table, and then ushered Lestrade over towards the sofa.

"We are old men, Doctor Watson and I," he said with a laugh, "and our lazy, retiring habits cause us to eat far too late in the day to schedule visitors for lunch. Bear with us and be patient, we'll be brought up our second meal in an hour or so, and before that time we shall have plenty of opportunity to discuss matters at hand."

The three of us settled ourselves into our favorite chairs, taking up the peculiar, three-pronged judicial positions that Holmes was so fond of. "And so," he asked Lestrade, with a little smile.

Lestrade sighed. "I've reason to suspect that old aquaintance of ours, Mr. Daniel Fairchild." Holmes shook his head, and Lestrade continued, his deadpan tone completely unchanged. "Or perhaps that same Alec Allastair character who started those fires only so many weeks ago."

"Mr. Allastair and Mr. Fairchild," Holmes insisted, "are serving their time and are still quite in custody, as you know better than any, as you locked them away with your own hand." He raised an eyebrow at Lestrade, and nodded cnouragingly, biting his lip as he did when he was preoccupied. "And Miss Sarah Carraway is in quite the same position. I cannot think of any enemies that Miss Fairchild could have, and Mycroft has few enough aquaintances to have even fewer enemies than she. It must, then, be your everyday burglarly, done by a particularly shrewd man."

"So it must," Lestrade agreed grudgingly. "I suppose that all of that is as true as could be. Well, Mr. Holmes, I'm most absolutely at a loss, as you no doubt suspected. Your aid should be quite invaluable."

For the entirety of the conversation, I sat back and watched the two men, since at no point did they ask for my opinion. It seemed to me as if the two were involved in some poorly rehearsed show, with Sherlock Holmes gently prompting the confused and reluctant Lestrade in every statement. What was this, I wondered, this play, apparently for my benefit? The color rose to my cheeks, and I found myself uncomfortable in my chair, eager beyond reason to get away from this tribunal and out into the fresh air. I excused mysel abruptly, with a few low and hurried words, and then made my way out into the sun, abandoning the lunch that I saw our landlady bringing up herself from below.

Even as I slipped out of the front door, I heard Inspector Lestrade make a deragatory sound in his throat. "This is an elaborate little game you're playing, Holmes," he was saying. "I wouldn't be surprised if it only ended in tears."

My friend laughed. "Hardly, Lestrade. It's entirely harmless fun, you'll applaud me in the end. It's an ingenious way to meet my ends, as I'm sure you'll admit."

Sick to my stomach, and seething with rage, I hailed a cab.

I admit that I likely caused the driver a great deal of grief that day, as we drove around towards Mrs. Cecil Forrester's on a whim of mine. I wondered to myself, perplexed and full of injured pride, what it was that my friend was getting at with this "game" as Lestrade had shrewdly called it.

If it was some sort of ruse for the sake of catching the thief, than why was I so obviously not allowed to be a part of it, and why had Holmes been so nonchalant about keeping me in the dark? He knew better than anyone that I would throw away my lodgings, my possessions and my comfort, even my wife's company for the sake of his little adventures. And my companionship was not trustworthy enough to be given insight into this mystery of his.

And then of course there was the inexplicable intrusion of Miss Fairchild into every aspect, professional and otherwise, of my life of late. I could not decide in that moment if I was more indignant for Mycroft Holmes, seemingly oblivious and innocent of all that took place, or for myself. I had seen Sherlock Holmes callous and insensitive before, but apparently in his new incarnation as a lover, he became even more so, rathre than gentler and more understanding. I supposed that an emotional situation such as love would easily bring out the worst in people in many situations, and that it was to be expected.

And there, I had said it. My thoughts stopped their angry train, and I lingered over the realization that I had hit on the true cause of my misgivings. Love was what I had called it, and that was what was so shocking. Love had been known to change many a man's habits, to cause him to turn from his friends and to accuse them and wrong them in many ways. Of course my friend was no machine, despite his desire to be considered so, and thus I had been cut out of his life and his thoughts in favor of a woman. It was entirely to be expected, I repeated in my mind, over and over again, as the cab pulled up outside of Mrs. Cecil Forrester's home. I could not rejoice in it, for it was the most ill-made and ill-timed of matches that I had ever seen. That was the reason that it rankled so much within me, yes, that was it.

I realized that I had to make a choice. Either I must sit by and watch my friend destroy himself and his relationship with his brother, not to mention Mycroft's newfound and unexpected happiness, or I had to intervene and put a stop to all of this nonsense. Just as I was thinking that, as a friend, it was my responsibility to step in, a third option occured to me. It turned me cold to think of it, and yet, the more I did so, the more I realized that it was the best possible choice to make. There would be nothing lost to Holmes, and I myself would be burdened no longer with a heavy conscience as I watched him at his wooing.

With a curt nod to myself, I instructed the driver to turn the cab around and return to Baker Street, even as we stopped. He grumbled, displeased with his capricious fare, but all I could think about was how I would deliver my decision to Sherlock Holmes.

Inspector Lestrade was just leaving in a cab of his own, when we pulled up to 221B Baker Street. I paid the cab driver, and waved him off. He was no doubt glad to be rid of me, and particularly glad to have the rather expensive fee that my ride back and forth had elicited. Lestrade called something to me in a friendly voice as I mounted the stairs, but as I turned to see him, his cab was speeding away around the street corner.

Sherlock Holmes was again at the violin when I entered, something pleasing by Vivaldi that I had never heard him play at before. Upon seeing me, he laid down the instrument, and smiled with a little bit of a gentle reproach in his gaze.  
"Ah, Watson," he said, "you left us in such a terrible hurry, I hadn't even a moment to ask where you were off to."

"I apologize for my rudeness," I said, straightening myself in the face of his remonstrance. I was no child, and I was determined not to be treated as one. "I felt that as my presence was not needed, it would be best if I left you and Inspector Lestrade alone to your own devices."

Holmes shook his head, waving his hand airly at me, and turning back to the chair near which he had left the violin. "I've been thinking, Holmes," I was saying, trying to keep my voice as steady as I thought a hardened military doctor should have, "I've been thinking for quite some time, and I've reached a rather difficult decision that I should like to discuss with you."

To my great annoyance, Holmes began to wind his bow back and forth across the strings as I spoke, creating a frustrating, whining background noise to my demands for his attention. Determined not to be forestalled by this, I continued staunchly, eyes half-closed as I made my proclamation, my gaze not meeting that of Holmes.

"I think it is time that I left," I announced. "I feel that we've found ourselves at a seperation point, and that our respective lives can no longer take place in communal harmony."

Holmes' bow scratched across the strings, and he almost dropped it, as his eyes shot up to take in my closed and cold expression. Dumping the instrument into a messy, but undamaged heap on the floor, he opened his mouth, and then closed it again, as if he was trying to get out a sentence, but choked it off before he managed it. He stared at me for a long moment before looking away and rubbing the back of his neck with one hand in a nervous and startled gesture.

"My dear Watson," he said, smiling up at me hesitantly. "Surely we aren't as hopeless as all that. Why don't you come sit down with me by the fire for a moment and we'll talk about these new arrangements that you seem so keen on."

I bristled at his words. He thought it was a fancy of mine that should pass in an instant, and continued to treat me as if I were a recalcitrant toddler. "No thank you," I insisted. "I have only returned to inform you of my intentions, and perhaps it won't be long until I take up practice again, as a man of my age should do."

"But," Holmes insisted, dropping his paternal airs abruptly, "But I really thought,-!"

I did not give him a chance to continue, but shook my head to forestall his words, and turned on my heel, stalking out to the door. There was a deep and indescribable twinge in my heart, even as I went, and I glanced back over my shoulder just once, to see Sherlock Holmes sitting, slumped in incredulity and dejection, his mournful eyes following me as I left 221B Baker Street for what I was sure would be the very last time.


	5. Chapter Five: Found and Lost

**Author's Note:**

Be patient, my loves. I know there are three or four different threads, as Holmes would say, floating around untied, I will get to them, I promise.

My new computer is delivered tomorrow and then I will go on a typo-spotting spree, and all shall be sorted out to your liking. ;) I hope. :-D

**Chapter Five: Found and Lost**

I got a decently priced hotel room in town, and settled myself in, realizing that I should hav eto return to Baker Street to gather my possessions, something that no doubt would be found to bequite anticlimactic. Rather than return immediately, I spent some time perusing the papers in the comfort of my bed.

There appeared to have been a murder quite close to home in the middle of the day, so that I was surprised that Holmes and I had not been knocked up in the middle of our quarrel. A certain Mr. Andrew Parrish, who himself was an inhabitant of Baker Street, had been murdered the previous night by an ingenious act, leaving no signs or traces of either how the murder was committed, or of the person who perpetrated the crime. It struck me as very similar to our own diamond burglary, but with more tragic results.

I was morosely confidant that Holmes had already solved the jewelry theft, and so was quite sure that the authorities needed not to be concerned with catching the murderer. Already on his track as he was, it would not be long before the great Sherlock Holmes would baffle them all once more with his great feats of deduction. And Doctor Watson, for lack of another more profitable pastime, would sleep on his grievances. I allowed myself the brief thrill of self-confidance that perhaps Holmes would find his sleuthing more difficult without such a devoted companion to order around at his leisure. And yet, no doubt if he had needed me, I would be there still.

I was lying languidly on the bed, limbs splayed out in my complete dejected lethargy, when there was a knock on the door of my room. I glanced up at it, thinking to ignore it and to roll over in sleep, but the knock came again, more hurriedly, and perhaps out of sheer force of habit, I got up and answered it.

It did not surprise me this late in the game that Sherlock Holmes had the means of discovering my whereabouts so quickly. I had taken no precautions to hide myself away from him, and even if I had, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have made it his business to thwart my attempts. He stood bareheaded in the doorway, giving the inside of my room a distasteful look. "Really, Watson," he said, with a little shrug, "Why you would leave your comfortable long-time lodgings for such dumpy quarters is quite beyond even my faculties of reasoning. May I come in?"

It occured to me to say no, but again, long habit and reflex prevented me. He walked inside, and perched himself in the single chair that my room contained. "Well," he said, long fingers fidgeting in his nervous fashion with the edge of his sleeve, "You have managed to surprise me after all. I believe you deserve some sort of commendation, you may be one of the few men of your time to claim such an honor." I said nothing, and Holmes continued nonchalantly. "I believe, Doctor, that I may owe you a bit of an apology."

"Whatever for?" I asked, in a tone which declared exactly how much I agreed with his interpretation of the situation. Holmes kept his sad little smile, and patted the side of the bed beside him, beckoning me to join him. I did so slowly, attempting to exhibit reluctance, although my heart had already begun to soften in the face of his quiet and deferential demeanor.

"You see, Doctor," my friend began, "I have committed a serious error. My intentions, however, were of the very best kind."

It was an awkward situation that I was in. I had enough pride to not wish to pour out my grievances in a childish tirade. I was unable, therefore, to say anything at all, but was forced to stand there with a cross between sympathy and consternation on my face. Holmes, taking in my indecision at a glance, continued without any response from me, seemingly unperturbed.

"When you received Mrs. Cecil Forrester a few days back," he began, "I knew at once that no good could come from such a visitor, and indeed from such a present as she had brought you. I noticed the letters at once, and I have seen how you have avoided them, and yet how you have been loathe to get rid of them. The sad reminiscences of your late wife have indeed so confounded and depressed you that I became exceedingly concerned for your sake, and thought that I should head the problem off early on, so that you needn't' dwell on misfortune and sorrow."

Holmes glanced at me to look for any appreciation of his deductions, but I shrugged. It was quite an obvious thing, and I had not taken pains to hide it from him. With a little rueful sigh, Holmes continued, laying a hand on my shoulder for a moment before he jumped down from the bed, and began to pace around me in thoughtful circles.

"With the desire to assuage your grief in mind, I went to my brother Mycroft and beseeched his aid. It was then that he and I decided that we should hide away a little present which he had bought for Miss Fairchild, and that we should make ourselves a mystery out of it, so that, caught up as you and I would be in our attemts to find the criminal, you would no longer have a moment to think of poor Mrs. Watson and your own misfortunes.

At this point, he chuckled darkly to himself, and shook his head. "It was a very childish pursuit, my dear Watson, it was really quite terribly infantile, and I should have seen it to be so from the start. But to be honest," and now his gaze met mine, and he stopped in his tracks, "you may have discovered in the past that I find it very difficult to cope with genuine grief." He paused for a moment, staring thoughtfully at the wall across from my bed. "It is very simple to calm those who do not know you, but to those who understand you, or who look to you for real comfort, well, in such cases I am at something of a loss, and so I felt that the best thing for me to do would be to act as I have. I am afraid, Doctor, that I played a rather poor game, quite contrary to my usual skill, because I was too closely attached to the subject. And so you not only found me out quickly, but you took an entirely erroneous interpretation of the matter, and in your rage and indignation at my treatment of you, you slammed from the house."

He sat himself down again on the edge of the bed in a decisive final gesture, and looked to me expectantly, with a very kindly and deeply apologetic plea in his eyes. I was forced to laugh, at first harshly, with the knowledge that I had been so easily duped. After a moment, though, I shook my head, and chuckled, taking a deep breath and rolling my eyes.

"Well," I announced. "I do feel rather foolish."

"Not nearly as foolish as I do, my dear Doctor, not nearly," grinned my friend. "Had I had any inkling of how you would take it, I should never have embarked on it in the first place. Perhaps my idea of a country holiday was a much better one, and I should very much like you to consider it afresh."

My heart filled almost immediately with warmth and relief , as all of my suspicions about how obselete I had become in my friend's eyes came to naught. Clumsy as it had all been, there was something endearingly brilliant in Holmes' attempt to cure me of my melanchonly. He had always had his own unique way of handling things, and I should have been more careful in my own analysis. And yet, there was still something that bothered me about all of it, something that I felt I could ask about now, since the two of us were in such a sympathetic rapport.

I had just opened my mouth to speak, when a tall and pompous looking representative of the official police tramped in through the still open door. Sherlock Holmes looked up at him in a questioning way, and the man cleared his throat with a nervous cough. He was a recent addition to the force, as I coudl tell, since in my associations with the great consulting detective I felt that I knew every regular of the police, and that anyone who I did not immediately recognize must be a recent addition.

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" The man asked.

My companion raised an eyebrow. "Surely you recognize me, Johnson, from the little matter on which I assisted you with Mr. Colwell's cravate?"

Johnson did not meet Holmes' eyes at all, but instead stared resolutely just beyond my friend's ear. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes," he continued in an official drone, "It is my job to inform you than anything you say will be used against you. I arrest you as having been involved in the murder of Mr. Andrew Parrish."

The room was completely still as Sherlock Holmes and I stared incredulously at Johnson, who coughed slightly, and then straightened himself up in a very official and professional manner. I glanced at Holmes, who was now shaking his head with amusement and confusion in his eye.

"My dear sir," he began, "this is hardly a very good joke, nor the time for such things. I find myself rather indisposed to your humor at the moment. Perhaps you would be so good as to tell me why it is that you have tracked me down at my friend's hotel room, and to get as briefly to the point as you can?"

"I will ask you to come quietly," Johnson continued inexorably, bracing himself as if he was well aware of the strength and physical prowess of his quarry. "I should not like to start anything here, and I am sure that you will see reason and recognize that the game is up, and that you had best come with me without any scene."

To my horror, I recognized that this Johnson was in complete earnest. Holmes began to laugh, but I shook my head and advanced on the policeman with my hands outstretched. "This is absolutely preposterous," I cried, "this is absolutely the most ridiculous thing that I have ever heard! Don't you know Sherlock Holmes, man? Why, he is the greatest criminal agent there ever was! You cannot possibly think that-!"  
"When a great mind turns to crime," said Johnson coldly, "he is the worst of criminals. I believe it was yourself, Mr. Holmes, who first told me that."

Holmes had stopped laughing, and was staring at Johnson in some shock and consternation. "I believe I did at that," he murmured. "I believe it still and would say it again. I tell you, sir, that you are quite mistaken in your arrest. I have nothing to do with the matter."

"I'm sure." Johnson rolled his eyes. "Come along, then, Mr. Holmes."

My friend turned to me with a little sigh, a deep worry behind his eyes as he contineud to smile. "I suppose, Watson, that I shall have to go. There does appear to have been some very amusing mistake. I should like very much if you would return to Baker Street at once and keep track of my consulting for the short time that I am away."

"I would not count on it being such a short time," Johnson announced.

Holmes slowly joined the policeman, and, without another word, Johnson turned around and took my friend roughly by the arm, drawing him from the room in a curt march. I could hear Holmes saying, as he left, "I would like to speak to Inspector Lestrade immediately." Just before he disappeared around the frame of the door, he turned, and called to me over his shoulder.  
"Never fear, Watson," he said with a nonchalance that I could not for a moment share, "I shall be back for lunch tomorrow."

Then he and Johnson were gone, and I was left even more confused and horrified than I had been when I had left Baker Street.


	6. Chapter Six: The Better for Truth

**Chapter Six: The Better for Proof**

You can imagine my horror and my disquiet, of course, when, after several moments of waiting in the hotel room, I realized all of the import of what had just occured. After the best and most careful analysis to which I could subject myself under the circumstances, I realized that the best and most efficient way of handling this debacle was to get to Pall Mall and to Mycroft at once, so that he could come to our aid as well. After all, Holmes had always declared his brother to be in possession of even greater powers than himself, and surely with both Mycroft, Sherlock, an dmyself on the job, we could sort out the entire mess. In fact, I reflected, growing more relieved and eager the more I thought about it, Mycroft would surely have an alibi for his brother, whom he had seemed to have spent a great deal of time with in the last week. What I had previously seen to be an undesirable amount of time spent in Mycroft's rooms would now come in handy, and I rushed to hail a cab.

Mycroft Holmes was not as surprised as I was, but equally as disturbed when I brought him the news of his brother's arrest. He groaned, and slumped into one of his luxurious chairs, rolling his eyes back in his head in an excess of dread.

"It is because of the bracelet," he announced after a moment of his display. "It is that ridiculous business with the bracelet that has convinced them he is the culprit. No doubt the police traced Sherlock to the 'theft' of Anne's diamonds, as we were not terribly careful about hiding the whole affair, and have now decided that this unfortunately similar murder was committed by the same hand."

"But surely," I insisted, "Holmes notified the police of the real matter concerning the bracelet."

Mycroft gave a little desperate shrug. "I thought he had, but you know Sherlock, always desirous of someone to watch him solve his little mysteries. It's very likely that he did not correctly inform the police after all, and because of the great uproar that Anne and I made about the matter, no doubt word of the fraudulent theft got back to them in the end."

"But if you come to the police station, you can explain everything," I insisted, pulling impatiently at Mycroft's sleeve in my agitation. "You shall be able to clear up the entire matter, and they'll let him go first thing in the morning. You will come, will you not?"

"Right away," nodded Mycroft, standing up and stretching his great bulk with a few bodily cracks that spoke of ill-used it was. "I'll be along just as soon as I've gone over to get Anne."

"We've got no time," I cried in frustration. "There's really no time to lose at all, surely Miss Fairchild can wait here for an hour or so while we go to the scene of the misunderstanding. I highly doubt that when you've arrived and said your piece it will be more than an hour."

Mycroft shook his head, holding up a hand to forestall my angry protestations. "I shall get Anne," he said, "because it is she who has the bracelet now, as Sherlock returned it shortly after you left, with the expectation that he should tell you all. She'll need to present proof of all that we so, and so it is best that she and I travel together."

There was truth in what he said, and I recognized that despite my desire to make as much haste as possible, things must be done in their proper order, for the sake of ensuring success. "Very well," I said, trying to sound calmer and more collected. "I shall travel to the police station now, then, and I will await your coming. Please hurry. There really isn't a moment to be lost over this."

"Don't worry yourself," chuckled Mycroft, his better spirits apparently beginning to return. "Nothing can possible come from this unless someone will appear against him, and since there is no evidence and no witness who could possibly have caught my brother in the act of anything, there will be no prosecution. As you say, he will be free by morning."

We both went our seperate ways then, Mycroft over to his young lady's home, and myself to the police station, where I knew I would find my friend in custody.

When I arrived, however, to my chagrin, I was refused entrance, and unable to see my poor friend. I argued for a considerable time with the indefatigable Johnson, who kept repeating to me in the same deadpan monotone that he could not allow Mr. Sherlock Holmes to have any visitors, and that I should return home before it became advisable to connect me with Sherlock Holmes and with the murder that my friend was accused of. Absolutely seething with frustration, I was about to start my tirade of pleas and insistences all over again, when a familiar voice was at my ear, and I found Inspector Lestrade, even more haggard than usual, standing at my elbow.

"Doctor Watson," he was murmuring, "leave this to me, if you please, and I will be with you again in a moment."

Lestrade kept his word, and after a short and heated conversation with Johnson, our friend led me to a back room, where Sherlock Holmes appeared to be receiving particular treatment, due to his numerous instances of aid to the force.

"I must wait with you here," Lestrade was saying. "I've no concerns about you, but I'd much rather that I be the one standing in on your conversation than anyone else, and I worry that I may be the only member of the force who is convinced that Sherlock Holmes is not a very dangerous man."

Holmes was standing quietly in the corner of the unfurnished room, his lean frame braced up against the wall, eyes downcast, apparently lost in an extremelly patient perusal of the floor of his makeshift cell. It was apparent that he was making no fuss and no trouble, and seemed to have decided that resolution, rather than aggression, was the only way to bear out the situation.

When he heard my footsteps, his head snapped up, and he looked somewhat relieved. "Watson," he said, springing out of his chair in his excitement, "I had worried about what you would do when I left you at the hotel. You've been to Mycroft's, I assume?"

I nodded, hurrying to his side and laying a comforting hand on his forearm. "It's quite all right," I said, "your brother is to be here very shortly with Miss Fairchild, and together the four of us shall explain the whole matter. I am quite convinced that you are right, and that we shall all share lunch tomorrow and laugh at our misfortunes."

Holmes shook his head slowly, and chewed on his lip in rueful thought. "No, no, I do not think that is quite as likely as I previously said," he muttered. "I do not think, in fact, that Mycroft can be any help to us at all."

Surprised, I stared at my friend, and then, with a little laugh, I drew closer to him, lowering my voice and trying to sound comforting and reassuring. "I understand your pessimism, Holmes, but all that we have got to do is to show Johnson the bracelet, and then Mycroft and Miss Fairchild will explain everything."

Again, Holmes smiled sadly. "Yes, my dear Doctor, that is all that we must do, but I believe that you will be hard pressed to accomplish it. If you manage to both show the bracelet, and to convince Miss Fairchild and my brother to explain the length and breadth of the matter to the police, I confess that I will not only be greatly in your debt, but also greatly in awe of your powers of persuasion."

I could make nothing of his statements, and was just about to ask him what he meant by it all when I remembered that Lestrade himself had been in on the whole mock mystery. I advanced on him, holding out my hands beseechingly. "Why, Inspector Lestrade, the answer lies with you after all. You knew all about the real whereabouts of the bracelet, did you not?"

Lestrade nodded slowly. "Aye," he said, "I did at that, but the truth is that I cannot prove any of it, and it has been announced that I am too close a personal aquaintance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes' to be allowed any say in the matter whatsoever. I have been taken entirely off the case, and can assist you only as a member of the public."

"You see, Watson," Sherlock Holmes was saying, "we should be all the better for proof."

Looking back and forth between the two men, I read the complete resignation on my friend's face, and the concern and nervous twitching on that of Lestrade. I could not for the life of me determine why, in the face of all of my plausible assurances, they should still be so morose, and was about to ask as much when the door of the room, guarded by Lestrade, was thrown open, and Johnson entered, his eyes blazing bitterly at Lestrade.

"That is quite enough," he declared coldly. "Doctor Watson, I shall ask you for the very last time to leave us here, and to return to your own lodgings immediately. I am sure that an Inspector should be very glad to accompany you, if you linger any longer on the premises."

I waited for a moment, glaring into Johnson's smoothly confidant gaze, and was just about ready to suggest to him that he attempt to accompnay me home, when my friend's voice broke into my aggressive thoughts.

"Go home," he said, "and get a night's sleep. I shall very likely need you at your best tomorrow, perhaps more than I have ever needed you before."

Despite my desire to remain with Holmes until I was forced away, his words rang true, and I reluctantly started for the door, Lestrade at my back, and Johnson beckoning me on peremptorily from the front. Even as I left, Holmes cried out from behind me, and I spun around to find entreaty in his eyes as he stared past me at Johnson's set countenance.

"Watson," he murmured, "I should like you to go to Miss Fairchild tonight and ask her yourself to come to the station."

"But, Mycroft insisted that he would follow shortly after my own visit," I said. "No doubt you will hear from both of them in no time at all."

Holmes shook his head."Do as I ask, Doctor," he insisted, and there was a very faint tinge of fear in his voice. "If you have ever spent care on me, your often unworthy friend, then you will do ask I ask."

Lestrade and I walked silently together out towards the street, where he hailed me a cab, and waited by my side as I climbed in. "I'm sorry," he kept saying, "about this unfortunate occurence. I will try as hard as I can to keep it under control in your absence so that nothing of importance will occur until you have had time to sort it out again with Mr. Mycroft Holmes."

"Very good," I replied. Then, although I did not have to hear the answer to know it, I felt that I had to ask the question that had been burning in my mind ever since I had met Lestrade in the station. "What exactly will happen if we do not manage to succesfully clear Holmes of the charge, unlikely as that event is?"

Lestrade shrugged dolefully. "He'll be hanged," he said, and then walked back into the station with drooping shoulders, leaving me sitting in the cab. I stared blankly at the driver when he asked me repeatedly for my destination, unable to speak around my thoughts for several long minutes. It was not until we were back at Baker Street, and the driving was asking in irritation for his fee that I was able to regain myself and to think it all through.

I did not trust myself to sit too long on Holmes' words, but started off immediately for Miss Fairchild at Pall Mal, determined to wait there for her until she arrived back from the station, in order to fulfill my friend's request.


	7. Chapter Seven: Hell Hath No Fury

**Author's Note: **I've been spending some time working out typos and such on my new machine, hence a whole (gasp) day of not updating! I'm working through the previous chapters of the story as we speak, the new versions should all be up by the end of the day. ;)

**Chapter Seven: Hell Hath No Fury**

Miss Fairchild appeared in a cab not twenty or thirty minutes after I had camped out on her doorstep. I was eliciting some very intrigued stares from the neighbors, and was sure that, seeing as I was rather well known as Holmes' chronicler, there would be quite a scandal in the morning. Poor Mycroft Holmes might never hear the end of all the intrigue that had gone on around his doorstep, what with Holmes and I both calling so often for Miss Fairchild.

To my surprise, the lady came alone, quite from the opposite direction, so that it occurred to me that perhaps Mycroft had not found her, and that she had not been to the station at all. I rushed down to meet her as she got out of the cab, almost rushing her back towards it in my urgency.'

"Miss Fairchild, I don't know if you've heard about the trouble that our Sherlock Holmes has gotten into."

"I've heard." She gave a little, aggrieved sigh. "What a mess, don't you think? What an awful mess." She tried to push past me into the house, but I grasped her by the wrist and retained her.

"You'll need to go to the station," I insisted, "and bring that bracelet of yours." She looked surprised, and I shook my head hurriedly. "It's all right, I know everything." Miss Fairchild blushed crimson, and I softened my stare, patting her on the arm even as I tried to pull her away from the door. "It was all done with the best of intentions. I should never hope to have better friends, and I am not angry. But we really must hurry, we must get back to Holmes with the bracelet as soon as we possibly can, there's not a moment to lose in revealing the truth of it all to the police."

Suddenly, a disturbing change came over Miss Fairchild's dainty features, so that her face, usually gently set and demure, became harder, colder, almost malignant. She smiled a little, and shook her head, more to herself than to anyone else. "Oh, Doctor Watson," she said. "When you said that you knew everything, I thought you meant that you really did know. I see now that it cannot be so."

For myself, I had no idea what she was going on about, but I was sure that it could wait until after we had saved Holmes from the fate of a wrongly accused murderer. I am a goal oriented man, and my priorities asserted themselves firmly as I continued to tug at the lady's arm. "Please," I insisted imploringly "you can tell me or not tell me anything that you might wish to on the cab ride. For the moment, it is absolutely crucial that we go to the station at once, with that bracelet."

"I will go nowhere with that bracelet," she replied in a strange, distant voice. "I will not go to the station, and I will not go to Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Let go of my wrist, Doctor. I am going inside."

So struck was I by this unforeseen refusal, and by the calm, malicious tone in Miss Fairchild's voice that I let go of her wrist, and watched her walk into the house. She did not bolt the door behind her, and I stood there, staring open-mouthed at it, Holmes' most recent request echoing in my mind. I could see the somber resignation in his eyes as he asked me to entreat Miss Fairchild on his behalf. He had known that she would refuse, and so apparently had Inspector Lestrade. Yet, I could see no reason this obstinacy.

I went into the house, to find the lady in question seated at her dining table, her coat and hat laid gently on the sofa nearby. She looked up as I entered, and her blank, composed expression did not change even as I advanced on her.

"Please," I said, coming to her side and taking both of her hands in my own. "Please, Miss Fairchild, I beg of you to come to the station and tell all you know. Holmes is to be hanged if we do not prove his innocence, and it would take nothing more than your word and the bracelet to back up everything that Inspector Lestrade and I have said in Holmes' defense." She did not look at me, and I continued, pressing her hands urgently, trying to meet her eyes. "For Mycroft, then," I insisted. "For Mycroft's sake, you will go, won't you?"

Miss Fairchild laughed. She gave me a sour, amused look, with one eyebrow raised, not unlike a look I had often seen on my friend's face when he was feeling cynical. "My goodness, Doctor Watson," she was saying. "You are a very naïve man, aren't you?"

I bristled slightly at this, but was too preoccupied to be offended for long. "However that may be, what I think and what I know have nothing to do with this."

"It has everything to do with it," she pressed. "If you knew what you do not know, you would have all of the reasons why I shall never go to the station, and I shall never bring the bracelet, and I shall never speak up in Sherlock Holmes' defense until he has kept his promise to me."

With those words, things began to come clearer. I remembered all the nights that Holmes had spent at the window, and all of the times that I had seen he and Miss Fairchild together, all of the fleeting looks and the glances that had so stirred my soul. And yet, of course he could do nothing about it. She was promised to his brother, and he could never follow through with any of it. He knew that, no doubt. Certainly so did she. It was only a matter of frustration at having been left, after all, that was causing this, and with a little persuasion, with a little careful thought the lady would realize the error of her feelings and come to the station.

"He made you a promise, then?" I asked. "He knew, I'm sure, that nothing could ever come of it."

Miss Fairchild tossed her head defiantly. "He made me a promise with his eyes," she said, "a promise that did not need to be spoken. His face told me that I had his love, and I expect to have that love if I am to come to his aid. I want a promise from his lips that if I do so, he will in turn come to mine and take me away from here."

"But this is crazy," I ejaculated, my head spinning with different interpretations and emotions. "You know it is crazy. What about Mycroft? Don't you love him, after everything that has been between you?" It was an impertinent question, an inappropriate question, and yet under the circumstances it seemed normal and correct.

Miss Fairchild laughed again, darkly, in a low voice. "We command our loves," she murmured. "As we command our actions. I have loved Mycroft because I found that it was convenient to do so, and I do not believe that he has suffered by it."

But he will, I thought, backing away from this callous and heartless creature, whom I had only weeks before defended to my friend. Poor Mycroft would suffer by it, if he had not already, once he discovered how easily his lady's heart was swayed away from him, and in favor of his own brother!

I tried to keep calm, and to think of how to combat the mocking resolution in Miss Fairchild's dark eyes. There was nothing I could say, I knew, in the face of that determined feminine rage, and there was nothing that I, a mere bystander to the love affair, could say.

"You will have to see reason," I implored her helplessly. "No good can come from any of this. It would be better to just put it all behind us and to start afresh. We will get Holmes out of danger, and we will work it all out in the privacy of our own homes to avoid any scandal."

"Why avoid it? I relish the idea of being the woman who tarnishes the record of the great Sherlock Holmes." With that parting shot, she turned away from me to readjust a picture frame on the wall, and I found myself, after a moment, standing outside in the street, staring blankly at the road in front of me where Miss Fairchild's cab had been.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," said Sherlock Holmes ruefully when I met him again at the police station, and told him all that had passed between Miss Fairchild and myself. "And yet, even she does not have the right of it. I made her no promises, and I intended to make her none."

"Of course you did not, for your brother's sake." I nodded, feeling my confidence in my companion returning even as he refuted the woman's statements. "You would never betray Mycroft in such a way."

Holmes smiled. "I am not a terribly malicious man, Watson, and yet it was not for my brother that I would not have Miss Fairchild." He glanced over at the door, which was again being guarded by an uncomfortable looking officer.

"To avoid scandal, then, to avoid throwing all of us into some sort of disgraceful intrigue."

"No, no," Holmes insisted, shaking his head and laying one hand across him on my knee. "Neither to avoid scandal, nor disgrace, nor to avoid my brother's ire. No, I am not nearly as upright a man as you would have me be, Watson, but perhaps in time I will learn to follow your way of living, although it is so much more dull to live as safely as you wish."

"Well, then," I asked, "why did you do it?"

Holmes fixed me with a long, penetrating, curious stare, his eyes peering into every telling nuance of my face as he did when he was claiming to read my thoughts from my expression. "You don't know, then," he said, very quietly, so that even our reluctant guard could not hear him. "That is well, I think."

This was too much. I had been kept in the dark so long about so many things that I found myself unable to sit quietly as he hid more secrets. "There is more?" I asked, trying not to let my irritation creep into my voice. "More that I don't know? Surely, Holmes, I can't help you without everything that you can give me. You yourself have always told me that the best defense is the truth."

"My dear Doctor," he replied, "you must always think the best of me, no matter what I tell you to the contrary. I know you well enough now to know that. I should not hurt your resolve to think well of me. No, nothing, in fact, would make me a more bereaved man than to have lost your goodwill."

That was everything he would say on the matter, and I left him with the promise that I should return the next day with Mycroft, and that we would work it all out together.

That in particular was not a meeting that I was looking forward to, seeing as no doubt if I knew everything Mycroft Holmes would know the truth as well. I was not pleased, therefore, to find the man in question splayed comfortably on the sofa in my own Baker Street rooms when I returned.

"How is he?" Mycroft asked immediately, jumping up as I entered. "They wouldn't let me see him, though I waited for over an hour. I hope you had better luck than I did."

I stared at him, surprised at the cordiality of his greeting. "Why yes, I did see him. We talked the whole matter over. I was hoping to meet with you myself tomorrow, but I see that that won't be necessary."

"No, no, not at all," Mycroft insisted. "Anne and I are going to go over as soon as she is feeling better. She's very ill, you see, and can't leave her bed. I'm very worried about her, but these fits take her at times, it isn't entirely unprecedented. Poor darling, she's terrified about Sherlock."

He did not know, then, about Anne's deception, about what she was truly like, and about the power that she held over all of us. I wanted to tell him in that moment exactly what was going on, and I opened my mouth to do so in a rush, so that he would accost her and force her to bring the bracelet, and the truth before the authorities.

Even as I did so, and I looked into his keen features, I saw how he was softened by his love for Miss Fairchild, and how he would hear nothing against her. Even now, in the face of his brother's mortal peril, the most pressing concern on his mind was Miss Fairchild's feigned illness. There was nothing I could say that would change his mind, and if I attempted the truth, I would only harm his opinion of me, something that I could not afford to do.

"You'll come with me tomorrow, then, to see Holmes," I said. "We'll talk about it together and decide what is to be done." If anyone could convince Mycroft of the truth, it was Sherlock Holmes, and not myself at all.

Mycroft was laughing. "What is there to discuss?" he asked, with a little shrug. "All will be well as soon as Anne is feeling better."

She would never be feeling better, I thought. And the longer she took to feel better, the more weight would pile on top of the weight that was already pulling down on my heart.

And yet, despite myself, against my will and better judgment entirely, I felt a little twinge of unwarranted joy every time I thought about Holmes' insistence that he had made no promise to Miss Fairchild. Once everything had worked out, once we had won against this charge, we could retire back to our home, and continue our lives as if Miss Anne Fairchild had never forced her way into them. I, for one, wished that I had never encouraged my friend to give his brother's fiancée a chance. Perhaps seeing the best in people was both a virtue and a fault.


	8. Chapter Eight: Ever Forgive Me

**Author's Note: **We're going to start getting into some more pronounced slash around the next chapter. I felt I should warn you.

**Chapter Eight: Ever Forgive Me**

It was in vain, however, that Mycroft and I promised to meet at the police station. The very next day, on which we had intended to visit him, Sherlock Holmes was taken from under Lestrade's wing, and locked away in prison, so that we had no hope of seeing him further.

I found myself pacing back and forth in Holmes' own bedroom in the middle of the next day, listening to my own footsteps creaking against the floorboards, just as Holmes' had when I had heard him so many times in the night. I wished that I had that same eager energy which my friend used to push himself towards the solution to a case, and yet the more I paced, the more tired and desperate I grew, so that I could neither sleep, or eat, nor do anything of great use, but could only pace, and stare at the adjacent wall.

It was not quite yet evening when there was a knock at the door. I waited, but the bell did not ring, and so I was sure that I had imagined the knock, or that the wind had sent a twig to beat against the door. After several moments, however, the knock did come again, and I walked down the stairs to answer it.

I was expecting Mycroft Holmes, or a sour and pessimistic Inspector Lestrade. I was not ready for the appearance of Miss Anne Fairchild.

Although I instantly tensed at the sight of her, so loathe was I to speak to the creature that stood between myself, and my friend's freedom, I relaxed again when I saw the look on her previously cold and set features. She was ashen, quiet, and almost demure in the way that she addressed me. The lady would not meet my eyes as I silently held open the door for her, and I saw that for some reason or other, a great change had come over her during the night. Perhaps, I thought, she had realized the grave implications of her petty and arbitrary actions, or perhaps she and Mycroft had spoken, and he was finally aware of all that had gone on while he was blissfully ignorant. Whatever the reason, she would not sit on my sofa, but instead stood swaying nervously by my side table, turning back and forth on her finger one of the small gold rings that I had always seen her wear.

"So," I started, trying to peer into her downcast eyes, "you've come to your sense after all, have you?"

Her response came out all at once in a sort of cry. "I'm a wronged, woman. I'm a wronged, woman, sinned against, poorly treated, wronged!"

With no sympathy for her violent ejaculations, I waited in silence, my eyes never leaving her face, until she turned her own eyes up to meet mine. "I will give you the bracelet," she said. "I will give you the bracelet because I have no defense against he who has wronged me, and I wish to be rid of all of you, as soon as I can." This last was said with unfettered bitterness, and even as she spoke, Miss Fairchild pulled a long box out from underneath her coat. She opened it to show me that inside it lay an unclasped diamond bracelet, of just the description that Mycroft had originally given us.

"You'll have to bring it yourself," I said, taking the bracelet from the box and turning it over in my hand. "They will need your evidence, and your testimonial."

She took the bracelet back from me, and thought for a long moment, before meeting my gaze with a jealous, cold fire in her dark eyes. "I will go," she said, "if we afterwards will never speak of this again. I wish to leave this place, and I wish to never come back. I do not want you to be able to say of me that Miss Anne Fairchild was a foolish, duped woman who was associated with the greatest sinners in this horrible little affair. I want my freedom, and I will give you your bracelet and the safety of Mr. Sherlock Holmes for that price, and that price only."

"It is far from me to be able to grant you such a thing," I said, repelled by her animosity and the casual way in which she dealt with this matter of Mycroft's heart. "I assure that I for one have no desire to keep up any acquaintance with you, if it pleases you to hear it."

"It does." Her eyes blazed at me, and she packet the bracelet away into her coat again. "It pleases me very much to know." She paused for a minute, and then laughed a harsh little high pitched laugh. "You're not going to ask me what it is that has turned my heart so. You're too much of a gentleman to ask me such a question. I suppose you see me as a very callous woman indeed, after everything that has taken place between us, and after all you are probably very right in that. But I have learned callousness, Doctor Watson, I have learned it from the way that I am treated! Would you like to know, then, what has become of it all?"

I did not respond. I knew that anything she had to tell me with such bitterness and anger could be of no good to me or to anyone. I was satisfied that she would go to Holmes and bring the bracelet. Miss Fairchild, however, would not be deterred from her biting remarks, and started in on me without needing any response.

"Your celebrated friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," and this she said with an ironical drawl, "has never had a heart to give me. I am at a loss for ever having his love, and surely was most grossly mistaken and abused in thinking that he could give it to me. He cannot love me, he can never love woman at all. He is incapable of it, it is hopeless, and I have been deceived."

That was too harsh, I thought, knowing my friend much better than I believe anyone else could claim. I knew that he was cold; I knew that he was often abrasive in the course of following his analytical and practical ways. Yet I had seen him recently more gentle and sensitive than most ever believed he could be, and I had seen him in times of trouble, and in times of calm. His heart was as live and beating as my own, no matter how hard he tried to hide it from the world.

"You're wrong," I told Miss Fairchild. "Sherlock Holmes is a wonderful man. He has saved more lives than you have ever considered, he has been entirely selfless in more cases than I have the ability to recall. You, yourself should not be so quick to judge, as I have no great impression of your character."

"You would think so, you would, you would," she almost shrieked. "But for all his preaching of the importance of the truth, of the necessity of honesty, he is as much a liar as anyone could ever be. His very existence is a deception. Oh, I have been so terribly mistreated!"

I was not impressed, and was anxious to get Miss Fairchild and all of her evidence to the authorities so as to release Holmes from his bondage. Nothing she said could stay my eagerness to go. At least, I thought that nothing could. What the vicious woman said next, however, cast everything, for a few moments, entirely from my mind.

"His heart is not his own," Miss Fairchild was saying. "It is not his to give, and it is not mine to take. And you would never guess who it is who has won this singular honor from the loveless detective." She let out a bark of laughter. "Would you like to guess, Doctor Watson? Would you like to think on it for a moment? I assure you, it is a riddle that will tax your very imagination." She paused for a moment, and then, with a bitter smile, she clasped my hand hard in her own.

"It is yours," she said. "You alone are the keeper of the heart of Sherlock Holmes, and it is from you that I have tried to steal it to no avail. I can only congratulate you. I can do nothing else."

Her words worked their way through my mind as it through molasses, each one of them registering itself individually. The import of her shot was slow in coming, and it was several moments before the entirety of the concept took hold of me. I recalled everything that Holmes had said to me, every look he had given me, every instance in which I had seen a yearning, or a longing which I thought had belonged to Miss Fairchild, or to his work, or to some far off fantasy of which I would never be a part. I found myself repeating in my head the last things he had said to me.

"That is well, I think," he had said to me, w hen I professed not to know of his reasons for turning away from Miss Fairchild. It was now painfully clear exactly what he had meant by that. He had not accepted Miss Fairchild's affections, not because of honor, dignity, or for the sake of his brother. He had turned away from the lady because he was absolutely unable to give up what he no longer had.

Miss Fairchild, seeing the conflict flashing in my face, smiled. "I have had my vengeance after all," she murmured.

It was several moments before I could speak again, but I pulled myself together as quickly as I could, and turned to face her, angry and desperate both for to confirm and deny her previous statements. "You cannot prove this," I said. "You are a vulgar, vicious girl, and you have nothing to prove these accusations."

"Oh, on the contrary," insisted Miss Fairchild. "I can prove everything."

She pulled, then, out of the same place in which she had been keeping the bracelet, a long, rolled-up piece of paper. It was held together by a piece of green twine, of the type that my companion occasionally used to hold together packets of his case files, or to mark off different beakers that contained chemicals which I was not to touch. She thrust it out at me with a triumphant look, and I took it slowly, unrolling it and letting it fall into a crumpled scroll, which was written upon in a quick and scrawling hand, a hand which I had no doubt belonged to Sherlock Holmes.

The document read as follows;

November 28,

I believe he begins to know me after all. Fool as I am to have ever agreed to live in such close quarters, I have given myself away. Absolutely no good can come of this, and yet I am loathe to leave. I feel as though my practice, my purpose, my prowess, none of the above could offer me any consolation if I were to take leave of him after everything that has passed between us. Oh god, I am undone. Watson, Watson, I am lost, and you, even in your intrinsically warm and kind ways will never be able to ignore for long the fact that I am lost. Watson, will you ever forgive me?

"It is a journal entry," Miss Fairchild was saying, as I read the paper over and over. I was vaguely conscious that she was talking about the purport of the message, but that I could derive just as well for myself. I ran the final line under my eyes once, twice, three times, feeling as though the more I read it, the more I pressed it into my memory, never to be taken from me. Watson, Watson, will you ever forgive me?

During the time which I spent reading and re-reading the scrap of journal, Miss Fairchild must have taken leave, although she left the bracelet on the side table, so that I could not think she would have a change of heart. Eventually, I folded up the paper, and tucked it into my breast pocket, my mind reeling, flooded with a sort of unimaginable cross between elation and horror. I thought for several minutes that perhaps I had gone mad.

It must have been a good deal later in the day that the front door creaked quietly open, and then shut again. I could hear it from where I lay in my bedroom, on top of the covers, trying the swirling and indistinguishable sea of sentiments that had taken hold of me ever since Miss Fairchild had left. Sitting up, I listened to the patter of footfall on the stairs, and after a moment, I saw Sherlock Holmes peer into my bedroom.

He held himself erect, almost at attention, gazing at me out of bright, eager eyes. He smiled a little, fingers drumming against the wall just outside of my room, so that I could hear the tapping quite clearly right through it.

"After everything, Watson, you've come through for me yet again. Someday I believe that I will have to publish your annals, since there is so little of your own personality in mine. I think that I shall spend several days in enjoying the feel of my own bed, and thanking providence, and yourself, for the luck that I've been graced with,. Well? Has it been so long that you've forgotten me? Have you no greetings for your old convict?"

It was then that his eyes fell upon the rolled up paper in my pocket. I watched the smile on his face fade, dimming slowly until he had read the entire matter in my confused, beseeching eyes. I watched my friend's heart making a slow and painful plummet through the windows of his eyes, and I could not think of what to say to him, so many things were crisscrossed over each other in my mind.

We did not speak for a very long time. He reached out to me, stepping forward, and then, seeming to think better of it, he turned out the light, and left the room. I heard him stumbling down the stairs in the direction in which he had come, and I knew that was aware of everything I had learned. I could almost hear Miss Fairchild's jealous and malignant laughter beating in the background of our quiet rooms, as the two of us sat awake, in separate rooms, in complete silence.


	9. Chapter Nine: Musician's Hands

**Author's Note: **Mild slash, physical male/male affection, implied male/male sex. You know the drill.

I'm glad you're enjoying hating Miss Fairchild, although I'm not done with her by a long shot. After all, poor Mycroft still has no idea what's going on. And if you think that Holmes and Watson are in for an easy ride from here on out…you really don't know me at all, do you? ;) Enjoy,

**Chapter Nine: Musician's Hands**

Looking back on it, I find the way that my companion and I spent that night absolutely absurd. Neither of us stirred from our respective beds for hours, listening to the sounds of the other breathing through the thin walls, afraid to move too much or to make a sound that might disturb the other.

It is as impossible for me to describe to the reader how I felt about our situation as it is to describe Holmes' own feelings, as he lay quietly in the other room. I can speak only of two grand, conflicting emotions which warred endlessly in my stormy soul. So battered with surprise was I, shock upon shock coming one after the other, that I was unable to engage my mental faculties, and so I drifted from thought to restless thought without any control over my own emotions.

In one moment, I had nothing but trepidation for any confrontation which might take place between Holmes and myself. The confession had been clear on his face when he had seen me in possession of his little paper, and all of Miss Fairchild's words rang truer and truer in my ears at every moment. I could not fathom what this was, this companionship that had so smoothly and subtly turned into a deeper feeling of which I had felt Holmes incapable only weeks before. The word love could not make its way into my mind without being pushed out by fear and practicality. That Holmes could love me, that he could entertain the thought that our friendship had become an inseparable and binding rapport of a romantic nature was absolutely unfathomable to me. It was more than simply unwarranted, it was wrong, against God, against society, against everything that I had spent all of my time recovering to be a part of. The repercussions of such an emotion chilled me to the bones even as I lay comfortably in my bed, and a twinge of genuine fear shot through me as I thought of how long this must have been churning in Holmes' impenetrable soul.

The other emotion that took hold of me, even as I thought through all that I have just discussed, was a longing. I hope the reader will not turn from me in disgust when I say how much I found that I was suddenly taking great pains to stay in my own room. I listened with eager frustration to every breath, every sigh that Holmes emitted from just beyond me, and I could feel fear, his frustration, his concern, all of which culminated in a desperation that was almost palpable. Was it his, then, or was it mine? To this day, I cannot say. Perhaps the feeling belonged to both of us, and the more that we lay there, together but separated by the walls; the more I felt that we were breathing the same desperation.

Everything came back to me in those instants, and I recalled all of the trepidation and disquiet that I had felt when I first saw my friend showing interest in Miss Fairchild. What I had then put down to concern for his well being, and for the propriety of his actions I now realized had been a part of that same desperate feeling, that loss of something that I had never had, and yet did not want to lose. The thoughts struck me with horror, as I realized that I was as inexorably caught up in this web of sentiment and longing as Holmes was.

"My god," I murmured, "What is to become of us now?"

Holmes stopped his haggard breathing abruptly, and I realized that I must have spoken louder than I had intended. There was no doubt that he had heard me, and I listened to the sounds of his scraping around on his bed, edging closer to the wall, so as to be able to hear anything else that I might let go in my frustration.

We lay there silent, afraid now even to breathe, staring at the walls that lay as barriers between us. I do not know to this day how I did not asphyxiate in those moments, so careful was I not to be the first to be audible over the sounds of our own disquiet.

I heard Holmes get up, and I almost rose with him, but he did not enter my bedroom. Instead, he crossed to the stairs, closing the door quietly but audibly behind him, and descended towards the sitting room. I heard a gentle clunking and a murmured oath, and then, slowly at first, a familiar melody drifted up towards me through the floor. It was the same violin music that I had heard several days ago, on that night when Holmes and I had sat together all night in the front room, before any of this recent nightmare had taken place.

This time, however, I recognized only half of myself in the music. Holmes was playing my very longing, my very wistful knowledge of the possibilities that lay beyond that bedroom door. There was trepidation and anguish, too, but I realized, although I am not sure how, that it was not akin to my own. It was not a simple frustration or concern about society, or about the rights and wrongs of our world. Instead, it was a great feeling of loss and consternation, as if my gaining the knowledge of this sentiment which we shared had been almost as if Holmes himself had lost all trace or hope of it. And so this tune was a combination of our thoughts and fears, of our concerns and wonders, as any creation of two people must always be. There was compromise and sorrow in it, and it played at my very heartstrings even as Holmes ran his bow across those of the instrument. I listened to the music, and let the knowledge of fulfillment wash over me, fully aware that he shared every feeling that I entertained, and so did this heartfelt music.

I do not know how long I lay quiet and listened, but after a little while, the violin went silent, and I heard Holmes lay it down against the side of his chair. I stood up from my bed, put on my dressing gown, and slipped out of my room to start down the stairs towards where I knew my friend would meet me. He was standing quite still by the side table when I reached him, and he looked up at me when I stopped to stand beside him in front of the chemistry equipment.

"Did I wake you?" He asked quietly, almost reflexively, as if out of habit. I shook my head, and he smiled. "I know," he said, with a dark little laugh. "I heard you in your bedroom, and I thought that you must be awake enough for the violin."

We stood together for a long time in silence, enjoying the quiet company without any barrier to hold us apart. Then Sherlock Holmes turned to me, and his eyes were clouded and terrible in their grief, yet one more sentiment to which I was not accustomed in him. "Watson," he said, "I should never speak of it again. You will never have to hear so much from my lips as long as you live if only you will put it behind you and stay in these rooms where I have so long treasured your company. No, it shall never go between us or beyond us from this day forward if you will only put it from your mind." He stared at me beseechingly, with a little hopeful smile in his eyes.

I shook my head. "I cannot put it from my mind," I said. "I certainly cannot put it behind me."

He dropped his eyes to his nervously clasping and unclasping hands, and his voice was crestfallen and bleak. "I see," he said. "Well, well." He gave a little laugh, and wrung his wrists gently in his resigned helplessness. "I am sorry, I am sorry. I had never intended for this to happen. You ask what is to become of us, Watson, I ask you what now is to become of me?" He listlessly lifted a beaker off of the side table, and then put it down again in a useless, fidgeting gesture. I tried to smile.

"On the contrary," I insisted, taking him by the shoulder with a gentle hand, and turning him to face me head-on. "What is to become of us?"

Holmes' dry eyes were brimming with surprise and unparalleled pleasure as he raised his violinist's gentle hand to my face and kissed me. It was not right. It was never proper, and even as I write this I know that you may recoil from the passage in some shock and perturbation. No, it was not sound, but it was marvelous, and I shall never hope to be more overjoyed than I was when he pulled back from me and looked me in the eye again.

"My dear Watson," he said, with such warmth of sentiment and depth of feeling as I had never before experienced, "what have we done?"

His long, thin, muscular arms were around me, then, and our hearts, which had been so caught up together in the violin's strings beat in some sort of simultaneous rhythm, one that I could have listened to for hours on end without tiring in the least. Only now, for the first time did I know what Holmes meant when he spoke about being too caught up in the actions and the heart racing zest of the moment to be exhausted. The more I knew of the man, the more the depth of Sherlock Holmes made sense to me, and the more I loved.

I do not know what time it was when I woke up. I cannot say that it was the next morning, for I fear that it was far into the afternoon when I fluttered my eyes open and found Sherlock Holmes and I lying together on the sofa, seemingly never having made it back to our bedrooms. Holmes was curled into the bend of the couch, his shirt apparently having completely disappeared in the piles of clothes that had ended up below us on the floor.

At the sight of my quietly breathing, exhausted companion, I blanched, and everything of the night before came back in a sudden jolt to my mind. Every feeling, every touch, every fear, every single pang of terror and of joy that I had experienced one by one came back to me, and I was so overwhelmed that I stumbled back from the couch, and, grabbing up my own garments from the pile, I retreated to my room.

As I sat on my bed, tingling all over with confusion and the creeping doubt that I had been unwilling to allow myself to experience the night before, I listened. There was someone at the bell. I heard Holmes unfolding himself lazily, and making his slow way around to wherever he had abandoned his shirt. He would be trying to smooth down his hair, I thought, and looking around for me. Then I heard the door creak open, and a low, deep voice was speaking, one that I recognized as belonging to Mycroft Holmes.

There was a long silence after Mycroft spoke, and then Holmes made some unintelligible, curt response, and the door closed again. I heard his footsteps on the stairs, and I knew that he was coming up to find out where I had gone. I steeled myself for those same joyful, disbelieving eyes that I had seen the night before, but even as he came to my door, he stopped, and knocked.

"Watson," he said, "It's all right, there's no one here." He paused, waiting for a response.

I said nothing, and yet I did not try to disguise the fact that I was awake. He had heard me leave, and no doubt had heard me sitting and rustling around in my own covers only moments before. There was no hiding any of that. I sat, therefore, and looked away from the door, trying to formulate something to say to the man whom only hours before had been my most trusted confidant in the world.

"Watson," Holmes was saying again, a little concern creeping into his voice. "Are you awake?"

I lay down on my face on the bed, and buried my head into the pillow. After several more crawling minutes, Holmes retreated to his own room, and I drifted into another uneasy sleep.


	10. Chapter Ten: A Proposal

**Chapter Ten: A Proposal**

The next two days were strange ones.

I have spoken before now about how well my friend Sherlock Holmes could speak when he wanted to, and in fact I find that I took a great deal of pleasure in the intricate conversations which I could have over the breakfast table with him. Even his periods of long silence were followed up by brilliant repartee which amused us for hours, so that we reveled in each other's company, and were never lonely, alone as we were in the world.

So of course you can imagine my chagrin when, for the two days after our night of revelation, we sat in silence, not unfriendly, but without that comfort that comes from a long and intimate acquaintance. I felt that our lives had taken on a sort of distastefully outré romance which would stand in the way entirely of our being at peace.

Holmes was uneasy, and his manner to me became extremely polite, and painstakingly formal, as if he wanted to keep me at a distance even as he had reached out to me so recently. In my confusion, I followed his every lead, and contented myself with my writings and with each day's news, or with being lost in my reminiscences of the way things had been long ago when we were both younger, more innocent men.

I spent a good deal of time in my own room, therefore, to keep away from the awkwardness between us, and only heard the doorbell ring now and again. I occasionally could make out the tones of Mycroft Holmes, and once he and my companion had a long conversation, although, from Holmes' easy cadence, and Mycroft's own polite friendliness, I determined that he had not yet reached the subject of Miss Fairchild's faithless heart.

It was not until the third day that I was roused to action by an unfamiliar female voice from the downstairs rooms. I had been sitting on my bed as I had taken to doing lately, contemplating heaven only knows what, when the bell rang, and I heard Holmes padding over to the door. He opened it, and then he stood stock still for a moment, and there was complete silence in the house. A soft woman's voice floated up to me through the floor, and I strained my ears, trying to make out the words of Holmes' reply. In my curiosity, I opened my bedroom door, and started on to the landing.

Even as I did so, Holmes snapped around to face me, and there was dark trepidation in his eyes. Looking past him, I was unable to see the woman to whom he spoke, who was standing just beyond the armchair, obscured from my view.

"I need a moment, Doctor," Holmes was saying, "if you'd be so good. Only a moment."

As I slunk back into my room, I heard Sherlock Holmes take the young woman outside, and close the door behind her. As they left, I saw a sliver through my door of the back of a blond head following Holmes out into the sunlight.

It was perhaps only twenty minutes before he returned, but when he did so, his face was ashen and bleak, and his hawk like features were drawn together in worry. Four days ago all of this would have roused my suspicions against my friend, but since then I had learned too much to believe that he could have personally done anything. It seemed that the whole world, in fact, was against him, and my heart went out to him as he quietly settled himself on to the sofa. Here was a man whom, in trying to assuage my misfortunes, had encountered far too many of his own.

"Bad news?" I asked, peering over the landing at him. He looked slowly up at me, and smiled distantly, shaking his head.

"Don't trouble yourself," he assured me. "but come downstairs and do not let me keep you any longer from your liberty in the house. I fear that I have taken control of the sitting room for too long."

It was not, then, an invitation to join his company, but an apology for having asked me to remain in my room for the duration of his conversation. Confirming my suspicions, even as I started down the stairs, Holmes was heading towards them, apparently en route to his own bedroom.

I smoked a solitary pipe for a few minutes, and perused an article in the paper that was lying on the side table concerning Holmes' capture, and subsequent acquittal. The authorities had not, it seemed, uncovered the actual murder, and yet I was sure that no one had called on my friend to assist them. In deed, it would be far too embarrassing and shameful for the official forces to ask the man that they had so wronged and falsely accused to help them. I was not sure that, were I myself in such a position, I would be so keen to assist. Yet I knew that despite all of his wrongs, Holmes was always eager to begin a chase, and that the police erred in not calling on him.

Even as I sat, there was yet another ring at the bell, and I answered it to find Inspector Lestrade waiting on the front steps. He inclined his head politely at me, his small beady eyes scanning the space behind him for any trace of my friend.

"Good day, Doctor Watson," he said with a little curt nod and a smile. "I know that this is really very awkward, but I was hoping to call on Mr. Sherlock Holmes." He gave me a little wary, sidelong glance. "I should just hope to remind that throughout all of this I have been your friend, and that you and Mr. Holmes have no reason to turn up your nose at my visit."

I shook my head, ushering him in and seating him on the sofa. "You don't need to remind me," I said with a smile. "There is no one else to whom I feel more grateful to at this moment, Mr. Lestrade. I am sure that my companion feels most the same way, I shall just get him for you. One moment."

He waited, after a murmur of thanks, and I went upstairs to knock on my friend's door. He did not answer it, and so out of habit, perhaps, I opened it and found him standing at the window in the far corner, his fingers tapping against the windowsill as he stared out across to the other side of the street. "Holmes," I started, but he turned on me with a wild, wary look in his expressive, darting eyes.

"Is she back already?" He asked with a fearful exhalation. "What, has it been longer than I thought?"

I shook my head, endeavoring to calm him even as my own hackles rose at his apparent fear. "It's just that Lestrade has come to see you. He is waiting in the front room. I should think it has something to do with the murder of which you yourself were accused." I attempted a little laugh. "Don't you find it ironic, that after all you should be approached to be the savior of the police?"

Holmes didn't laugh, but smiled, relaxing his previously rigid frame against the wall. "Exceedingly," he agreed, and then started out of the room and down the stairs to meet Lestrade. As he went, there was an ease and charm in his manner that I had seen in him so often, a particularly theatrical ease which I knew was characteristic of Holmes when he was forcing his humor.

Holmes consulted with Lestrade for several minutes, and it seemed that the official police were still unable to provide us with any particular information about the case. Holmes was hardly surprised, and assured the agitated Lestrade that he would contact Scotland Yard the next morning to throw himself whole heartedly into the case, with no misgivings or hard feelings.

"Provided," he finished with a smile, showing Lestrade to the door, "that I am not molested or forced into custody upon my arrival. I have had very little experience of the bad side of the authorities, and yet I can say with conviction that I've had quite enough of it to last a lifetime."

"Well?" I asked, when Lestrade had started, looking much encouraged, down the street. "What's this all about? I trust that we aren't going to have any more secrets between us."

"No, no, Doctor, no more secrets." Holmes slipped into his armchair, and folded his fingers under his chin as he looked at me. "It is quite as you suspected. Friend Lestrade wishes for advice upon the case, and he seems to be completely at a loss as usual. Not a bad sort, as you and I both know better than most, but hopeless in his profession as far as he personally goes. It is well, however, that Lestrade has learned not to shy away from asking for help and advice, and he seems to take no more offense in doing so. I should hardly refuse his call for assistance, especially after he has so nobly answered my own. It does seem a very long time since that incident of the Drebber murder. I fear that all of us have gotten older, and it seems that we've all matured in our age."

Looking at Holmes, I felt, with a whimsical inward smile, that he was ageless, timeless, and could not be judged from the Sherlock Holmes of age thirty, except that his face was darker now, more lined with all the horrors that he had seen, which would of course affect any man. His demeanor, his manners, his moods and his habits were just as capricious and youthful as they had always been, and there was a charm in that, despite its frustrations.

"That is not," I said, "what I meant." I stood in front of him, one hand planted on my hip, feeling that staring down my timeless friend was a foolish venture, no matter how badly I wanted honesty. "I heard all that you heard about Lestrade and his case. I want to know who called earlier and why you're in such dread of the lady."

He sighed, and I knew that he had been expecting the question. He fixed me with a rueful, almost approving grimace, and shrugged with a little shake of his head. "Of course, as I've said, there will be no secrets. But perhaps there will be some waiting on your part, Watson, as you are a long suffering man, and you do understand the way my mind works. All things in their time."

Again, I shook my head. "It will hardly do to hold out mysteries at this point," I began, but Holmes was speaking again, seemingly unaware that I had opened my mouth.

"I should like, however, to take that little holiday that I had mentioned to you. Do you remember?" He cocked his head at me, trying to determine my expression. "I see you don't. I once spoke to you of the health and vigor that two aging men could glean through a little holiday in the country, as you yourself have so often remarked upon. I have a friend who I've been meaning to visit, and I think that I would like you to accompany me, if you would be so obliging and flexible."

"What," I asked, somewhat surprised, "so soon?"

"Now, in fact," replied Holmes with a nonchalance that was tellingly contrary to the terror I had seen in his eyes. "Immediately."


	11. Chapter Eleven: Brotherly Love

**Chapter Eleven: Brotherly Love**

I had never been one to refuse my companion anything, and I felt a thrill of hope that if Holmes and I took this surprise vacation, all of the things that had been burning in my mind might finally come together, and we might finally get to talk about what it was that had taken place between us. With that in mind, I set myself eagerly to the task of packing for what Holmes assured me would be at least a week of visiting with his friend.

We spent the next day bustling around in our own rooms, putting things together and setting our affairs in order, and Holmes refused to tell me anything else about our excursion, keeping the secret as he was wont to do with a glint in those fascinating eyes which spoke of his pleasure at my eagerness.

"But Holmes," I said at one point, a thought coming suddenly to mind, "What about Lestrade, and Scotland Yard? You gave them a promise that you wouldn't abandon them."

"So I won't." he insisted. "I shall wire them to let them know where I've gone, and if they have need of me I will be at their disposal, although I hope that Lestrade, with the help of the letter that I posted to him this morning will be able to make something of the matter without us entirely."

He had, then, solved it, I thought, and perhaps in the course of our travels he would regale me with the tale of how he'd done it. It startled me that he had put the case together without even having gone out, and yet I had known my friend to do things of the sort before, and so the matter passed entirely out of my mind.

At around noon, Holmes said that he had to step out to the post office, and that he would not be gone long. I mentioned to him that he might stop at the police station and say something to them about our going away directly, but he shrugged off my concern. I imagined that, as usual, his few minutes would translate themselves into a few hours, and so I rang for a bit of lunch, sure that he would not mind if I began without him. Even as I did so, there came a ring at the bell, and I opened the door to see Mycroft Holmes awaiting me, with a very deep look of worry on his intelligent, fleshy face.

"Ah, Doctor Watson," he said, clasping and unclasping his huge hands together, and not meeting my eyes. "Sherlock is not in, then. Well, that's just as well, that's just as well…I don't suppose it would be any trouble if I was just to come in for a moment. I won't keep you long, I assure you, no, I won't trespass on your time…do you know when my brother will be back?"

Dismayed, but not surprised, after everything, at his gloomy countenance, I assured him that he was welcome to come in, and to stay for as long as he liked. I told him that I had no idea how long Sherlock Holmes would be out, but that he was welcome to wait, and that he should stay for lunch while he was at it.

Mycroft Holmes shook his head. "No, I could not, I believe that I'm doing nothing but darkening your rooms with my presence, as I'm in no state for pleasant conversation. I'm in need of advice, if that doesn't seem a little too ironic." He smiled at me, and I recognized a little of my friend's own sad and rueful amusement in his eye. "I should be happier even to have it from you than from Sherlock, as, wonderful as my brother is, he has never to my knowledge had reason to take an interest in matters of the heart.

How wrong you are, I thought to myself, but said nothing of my thoughts. It would not do at all to speak to Mycroft of anything that had taken place in these rooms between his brother and I, at least not before I could make sense of it myself. Thinking about it in the presence of this innocent man sent a flush to my cheeks in shame and confusion, and I turned away to try to pull myself together. Mycroft Holmes did not wait for me to come to myself, but, apparently not noticing my disquiet, launched into his own woes, for which I was not ungrateful.

"It's Anne," he was saying, shifting nervously on the couch. "There's something amiss with her and I've no idea what to make of it. I thought that it was illness, but she shows no physical signs. It's just that she doesn't want to do anything. She won't go out, unless she's to go alone, and she visits friends often, but will not visit me. It's not," he said quickly, holding out a reassuring hand, "that she's with any other man. I know this, as she never has given me any reason to think that she is anything other than truthful or faithful. It is only that she seems…well, she seems as if she doesn't wish to see me anymore, and yet does not wish to call it off with me entirely. I cannot think what could cause her to be so fickle in her intentions towards me. I am not a wealthy man, I have nothing to offer her if not myself, and yet she seems loathe to spend any real amount of time in my presence."

I stared at Mycroft for a long moment, as I put together the facts in my mind. It was obvious that he had no conception of what had taken place between his brother and his fiancée. I had no idea how this could be, as I could not imagine that Holmes would have kept this information from him. Surely my friend had informed him sometime recently, discreetly, out of my presence that there was something wrong with his impending marriage. Yet obviously he had done no such thing, and I flared up in some anger at the callousness this negligence seemed to speak of in Holmes. Yet I was torn from these thoughts by the immediate necessity of dealing with Mycroft's concerns, and perhaps of explaining the circumstances myself.

I balked at this task, and was relieved when Mrs. Hudson came up to bring us lunch. At her arrival, Mycroft gave a jolt, and got to his feet abruptly, apparently shaken by the presence of another whom he did not wish to take into his confidence.

"I. think I shall return later, Doctor," he said with a little uneasy smile, "so as not to disturb your meal. I would appreciate it if you would speak to Sherlock about this, but no one else, please, no one else. I hope to speak to both of you very soon." He paused for a moment, and sighed. "After everything that you have witnessed of Sherlock and my exploits, you must find this concern of mine very trivial, and yet I assure you that it is of the gravest importance to me for all of its personal nature."

"I assure you," I said, patting him on the shoulder in what I hoped was a comforting manner, "that I completely understand. There won't be any need, Sherlock Holmes and I will call on you this evening at Pall Mall."

"I'll be waiting for you, then," Mycroft said with some relief. "Thank you, Doctor Watson; I really do thank you very much for indulging me." With that, he stepped out into the air, and our landlady, very used to agitated visitors to our rooms, gave me a sympathetic, long suffering look, and left.

For myself, I was too furious to do much of anything. I could not believe that my friend had not informed his brother of the situation, and was also angry that he had left it so that I might be saddled with the task. It was inconsiderate and cruel on so many counts that, when Holmes stepped into the room an hour or so later, I rounded on him with such consternation and aggression in my eyes that he took a surprised step back.

"My goodness, Watson," he said, giving me a long look, "something has happened here in my absence that has really put you into a temper."

"You don't need a great deal of deductive skill to determine that," I shot, glaring into his comparatively calm face. "I've just had a visit from your brother Mycroft, and I have to say that I am absolutely disgusted at the way in which you have treated the poor man. You should be ashamed of yourself, Holmes. I am ashamed of you." I turned away from him towards the wall, and he stood behind me in silence for several minutes before he spoke.

"To be ashamed of myself is one thing with which I can easily cope," he began quietly. "But for you to be ashamed of me, Watson, is something else entirely. In fact, it is my fear of you being disgusted with me that has caused me to so incur your wrath."

He sat himself on the edge of the sofa, and when he turned his beseeching gaze on me, I instinctively seated myself beside him. He folded his legs one over the other, and seemed to think for a moment before speaking, which he did in a drawling, resigned voice.

"I did not speak to Mycroft of the matter of Miss Fairchild's love, because I could not," he said. "I was completely unable to do so, for if I had, I would have found myself in a most unenviable position, and he would have been no better off for all of it. It would not have done either one of us the least bit of good, Watson, and I'm sure that if you think about it long enough you will see that for yourself."

"You'll forgive me, Holmes," I said coldly, "But all that I see is that you would be better off for not telling your brother that you had accidentally stolen his lover. That seems entirely a personal concern, and surely it would be better for Mycroft to know the truth, no matter how it hurts him, or how much it damages your pride to tell him of it."

Holmes chuckled darkly. "You give me no credit, no credit at all," he said. "I should have thought that you, in your optimistic fashion, would have believed a shred more good of me, but I see that you have twisted the facts in your own way. No, my dear doctor, it is not my pride that will suffer when we speak to Mycroft. Can you really not see it? You surprise me." He gave me a keen, piercing look, and I looked back, my resolve faltering, but not failing in the face of his quiet assurances.

"Not your pride, then, but your relationship with your brother," I tried, speaking more softly, still angry, but without that touch of malice that I had used when I had believed that he was only out to save his own skin at his brother's expense. "You are concerned about whether or not you and Mycroft will maintain your good will towards each other when this all comes to light."

"More charitable, but still incorrect," Holmes smiled. "I am so loathe to bring this all to your attention, as I was hoping that you would come round to it yourself before long, but I see that we must have the conversation after all. I suppose it is only fair, since I did force this disgrace upon you. He looked sadly across me at the trunk that I had left on the floor. "I had so hoped for a better setting for it. I suppose we may have to cancel our little trip to the country after all. I fear, Watson, that you will not wish to spend the time with me once we've spoken." He turned those deep, wonderful eyes on me, and his smile was fixed and forced, as he was a desperately cheery man. "But there is nothing for it now after all."


End file.
